Episode 520: Neal and Toby deep-dive into the history and lore of Saturday Night Live, the longest running sketch comedy show on television. They dive into how it all started, recap Lorne Michaels’ career and how he’s been able to turn SNL into a cultural institution. Then, a broader overview of SNL’s ability to turn some of its cast members into movie stars and Hollywood mainstays. Also, a debate on whether SNL is still the pinnacle of comedy. Finally, fun facts about the show you probably didn’t know. 00:00 - SNL 50th anniversary 2:50 - SNL’s cultural relevance 7:30 - The origin of Lorne Michaels 16:30 - The pipeline of movie stars 20:00 - Embracing the digital age 24:00 - SNL fun facts LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBD Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn ads. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Check out https://linkedin.com/MBD for more! Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did Saturday Night Live become a cultural phenomenon?
Good Morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on television.
A deep dive into the past, present, and uncertain future of the comedy juggernaut. Tape from New York, it's Morning Brew Daily.
Happy President's Day. Merry President's Day. Anyway, last night, some of you may have watched the 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live. And the sheer star power of the event made you forget it was on a Sunday.
Alumni like Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, OG cast member Chevy Chase were all there, along with frequent hosts Dave Chappelle and Steve Martin and powerhouse musical guests like Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus and Sabrina Carpenter. It was a show of force that reminded you just how influential the show was in shaping American culture.
Chapter 2: Is SNL still relevant in today's media landscape?
But has it maintained that grip today in 2025? In today's special holiday episode, we are going to piggyback on SNL's 50th birthday bash to dive deep into this cultural phenomenon, exploring the leadership mind of its ringleader, Lorna Michaels, its history as a movie star factory, and whether it's been overshadowed in today's frenzied media landscape. It's a ton of fun.
And we hope you learned something and maybe reminisce about some of the funniest sketches and characters. But first, a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Neil, were you scared of the dark as a kid?
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Saturday Night Live aged gracefully into middle age over the weekend, hosting a 50th anniversary celebration so big it ditched Saturday altogether and moved it to Sunday. It spanned over three hours and brought back everyone from iconic alums like Tina Fey and Will Ferrell to OG. Thank you.
It's part of the movie star promotional circuit, as proven by Timothee Chalamet's recent stint as host and musical guest to promote his Bob Dylan biopic. It still draws millions of views a week. Last season, the average episode received 7.2 million views, and most sketches rack up millions more on YouTube and TikTok. Its sketches have turned into enduring cultural touchstones.
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Chapter 3: Who is Lorne Michaels and how did he shape SNL?
He took a meeting with a Canadian TV writer and producer named Lorne Michaels, who pitched him on a comedy concept that would seem as if kids had sneaked into the studio after the adults went home. And that pitch worked. Lorne got the job and began rounding up a cast for the show's debut in 1975. He hired friends from Canada, including Dan Atkinson. and an absurdist comic named John Belushi.
He also locked in what would later be the first Hollywood star to emerge from SNL, Chevy Chase. This troupe of misfit comics called themselves the not-ready-for-prime-time players, and that really was the perfect description. They represented an avant-garde, boundary-pushing style of sketch comedy that marked a departure from the more suited-up era embodied by Carson.
Yeah, and honestly, let's relive that first show, too, because, you know, it wasn't great. It was a little half-formed at the time. What it did introduce the people to was this idea of a cold open, just dropping people right into the scene. It also introduced the idea of breaking the fourth wall.
I mean, in that first-ever sketch, Chevy Chase in a headset comes on stage and announces live from New York, it's Saturday Night Live. From Saturday Night. From Saturday Night, yeah. It was a different name at the time. And then also, who was the first SNL host? Because hosts are a huge part of the SNL conversation. It was comedian George Carlin.
He didn't actually participate in any of the skits or the sketches because, one, he didn't like acting, and two, didn't really like being part of a team. But then that's when Lorne kind of had this aha moment that says, wait a second, we definitely do need to fold these hosts into our cast. But I do think it was crazy how many mainstay SNL segments were introduced in that first episode.
I already mentioned Cold Open. I already mentioned Live from New York. But there's also a first SNL parody commercial. We've all seen one of those. That has become just an enduring format throughout the history. And then also, Weekend Update right from the first episode was a thing. And that is still probably some people's highlights of the show to this day.
So you've watched the show over the past 50 years. You will see some stuff that you recognize in modern television today.
And another tradition of SNL, which is that the cast members come and leave pretty quickly to go on to maybe bigger and better things, maybe a movie career, also happened in the first season. Chevy Chase was so popular in his role as SNL that he left after the first season to go pursue a Hollywood career. And who did Lorne Michaels replace him with was Bill Murray, who also...
had a pretty good career. Now, you can't really talk about SNL without diving into the man, the myth, Lorne Michaels, because while hundreds of stars have come and gone, he's been the rock and ringleader of the circus for nearly all of the 50 years in its existence, spawning all sorts of theories into his management styles, talent scouting, and philosophy on comedy and entertainment more broadly.
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Chapter 4: What role did SNL play in launching movie star careers?
How do you keep a show consistent when the cast is constantly changing? How do you adapt to changing consumer taste for comedy and the ways people watch TV? Only Dr. Evil can pull it off.
And Lorne Michaels, I mean, he is one of those people that you just have to refer... referred to by a single name and people know who it is. I mean, you can just call him Lorne and most people from the industry just understand who you're talking about. But it is such an interesting role that he occupies because you can't micromanage a troop of comedy people.
But some Al Franken has famously said that They needed a leader. Someone has to lead the show, and Lorne Michaels has been that figure. I do think it was fascinating how much control he does actually exert over the final product. He is the one who picks the final sketches that make it onto the show that you see, and it's not always the funniest sketches.
He has to consider all these other factors, like is the host going to be happy? Am I fitting everyone in? He's got a team that he has to coach up. Are these sketches going to play all across America? They can't just be relevant to New York City. They have to be relevant to the entirety of all 50 states. Is there enough topical material that makes the show continue to be relevant?
So once you start thinking about everything that is going through Lorne Michaels' mind, you start to have a greater appreciation for what he's been able to pull off over 50 years.
And these decisions aren't made until right before the show starts. Now, I didn't know this. Maybe you didn't know this. But at 8 p.m. on Saturday, they do a full dress rehearsal. There's a live audience there. They do everything as they would in the show. There are many sketches in there that actually don't make the show. Lauren is sitting there watching the show. Talk trans.
He's talking to his assistant who's writing down notes furiously. He's gauging whether the audience is laughing or not engaging the audience reaction to the show. So the show goes on at 8 p.m., three and a half hours before it goes live. And a number of sketches are cut.
during that dress rehearsal, other writers and actors for Saturday Night Live said, you know, those notes that are taken during that dress rehearsal are the most, you know, the most rich TV notes that one could ever have if you want to be, to learn how to be a producer.
And the question does become, though, because we're at 50 years now. Lorne Michaels is over 80 years old. Who can succeed him? Who is the anointed successor to the throne? Some of the names that have been thrown out are Tina Fey, Seth Meyers. But a lot of people are just kind of looking at everything he does and going, I don't know who else can pull this off.
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Chapter 5: How does SNL adapt to changing media and audience preferences?
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Want to feel aging differently? Get 10% off your first order of Mito Pure at timeline.com slash morningbrewdaily. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash morningbrewdaily. Another reason why SNL carried so much juice throughout the years was that Lorne Michaels' show was pumping out movie stars left and right.
National Lampoon's Animal House turned John Belushi into a comedy A-lister, and from then on, the gates were opened. Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Ben Schiller, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, They all dominated the box office at one point or the other from the mid-70s into the mid-2000s. Now, the pipeline has certainly started to leak these days.
You can point to success from Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, and Jason Sudeikis when it comes to their TV work, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that they are or even were movie stars. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph were probably in the last place
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Chapter 6: What are some fun facts about Saturday Night Live?
And it's very ironic, I guess, that NBC wanted to take down its clips, Saturday Night Live clips, from YouTube because, you know, that is where most people consume, not most people, I don't have the data, that is where anecdotally A large number of people consume SNL these days. I don't think I've talked to a single person who watches it live.
And NBC, SNL has done a large initiative by putting their clips on YouTube. And that is where SNL lives in the minds of many. And it's very, you know, uncertain about what happens to SNL the future as a live show because So many of its clips, like so many other types of media that we consume, is on YouTube.
And Lonely Island started it, NBC wanted it off, and now they're very intentional about crafting clips and putting their live segments, their sketches, on YouTube because that is where we watch it nowadays.
Finally, let's finish our SNL 50th anniversary show with some fun facts you can drop to impress your friends. Any show that lasts 50 years has some juicy nuggets. Neil, you won the pre-show cold open contest, so you're up first.
What were you able to dig up? Well, I want to hand out some host superlatives. The person who's hosted SNL the most times is Alec Baldwin with 17 appearances, and he's one of only five people to host SNL at least 10 times, along with Steve Martin, John Goodman, Buck Henry, and Tom Hanks.
In other host history, the oldest host was Betty White, and the youngest host was Drew Barrymore at seven years old in 1982 after starring in E.T. That must have been past her bedtime. I have some fun facts.
Thank you for those, Neil. The show has a ban list. Two of the more prominent names on them are Adrian Brody for doing this unscripted, bizarre Jamaican accent, and then Steven Seagal for being so difficult to work with that Lorne Michaels called him the worst host ever.
Some of those are disputed, but it's good that Lorne Brody has said to his knowledge that he's not actually banned, but I have also never been invited back on. And then I got a great Larry David anecdote for you, Neil. Larry David quit, then came back like nothing happened before Seinfeld. Larry David was a writer for SNL in the early 80s, but he hated kind of the work environment.
He didn't like that his sketches weren't making it to air. So one night he just quit mid-season, but then he realized that he really needed the job, so he pulled like George Costanza, and just showed up the next Monday as if nothing had happened. No one said anything, and he finished the season. That is just a great fact from Larry David and SNL lore.
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