Saturday Night Live repeat airdates question

A few weeks back I was home on a Saturday night and I decided to look through my assorted DVDs for something to watch. I happened to pull out Season 4 of SNL and noticed that the date happened to be the exact anniversary of a show hosted by Buck Henry that season, so I thought it would be fun to watch it. So the following week I happened to be home again (I know, I need to get out more) and I watched the next one hosted by Carrie Fisher, again on its exact anniversary date. That season was when I first started watching the show and it's been interesting to try and recreate that in real time or something close to it. Anyway, at the end of the Carrie Fisher episode, announcer Don Pardo promotes the following week's show, which was to be a rerun of the Thanksgiving 1976 show hosted by Paul Simon. I actually do have plans this Saturday, but I want to try and squeeze a viewing in. Now, I remember they usually did three shows and then a week off, which was usually a rerun from an earlier season. Then there would be a summer of reruns, which were usually from the season they just finished. Anyway...the original airdates for the actual shows are fairly common knowledge, but just for kicks I'd like to reconstruct a list of what aired in reruns, both on "weeks off" and during the summer hiatus. Is that info out there anywhere or would that take original research? As an aside, it also kind of surprised me to discover that Season 4 was actually the only season of the original (first five years) era where Chevy Chase did not appear at all. He left part way through the second season, then guest hosted one time each in seasons 3 and 5. I guess it wasn't as evident that he wasn't there because they had so many reruns of earlier years, and I remember an occasional joke here and there made at his expense. (I mean I know he'd left the show, but he never even made a cameo that year, which I guess isn't surprising after the infamous spat with Bill Murray when he had come back to host during the third season.) But anyway, they had all kinds of reruns during "off weeks." I specifically remember shows hosted by Peter Boyle and Broderick Crawford from the first couple seasons being repeated during the fifth season. Is there a list anywhere?

 

I thought a show called Weekend was shown once a month. Was that done by season 4?

 

It may have been. I vaguely recall it, but it may have ended by then.

 

I've done some original research and have compiled a nearly complete list of SNL rerun dates from 1975 on, including what else was aired in its time slot. It's not in an easily posted format, but I'll be glad to answer any questions you have.

 

Not being snarky but seriously,... please use paragraphs. That wall of text is too much.

 

You could actually avoid the thread if you feel it is too much.
I quite enjoyed reading the question as am a big fan of SNL.

Anyway Mark, I suppose you can derive most of the info you require from this list.
List of Saturday Night Live episodes (seasons 1–15) - Wikipedia

 

Sorry about that. I wrote that quickly and it didn't occur to me where paragraph breaks should go. It also ended up being much longer than I intended.

 

Thanks for the link, but I already know that info -- I have the DVDs for the first five seasons and they list all the original airdates.

What I'm talking about (and I think I might have seen this on the internet somewhere some years back) is which shows aired as reruns, both on "off weeks" during the season proper and also during the summer. I looked at the Wikipedia list and it doesn't seem to cover that, but maybe I missed it.

By the way though, looking at that list reminds me of something curious but unrelated. The last couple shows in the first season were performed after a lengthy break in the middle of the summer, but are counted as part of the first season:

7/24/1976 Host: Louise Lasser*
7/31/1976 Host: Kris Kristofferson

(*Despite claims that this show was never allowed to be shown in reruns, it was part of the early 1980s one-hour syndication package and I am pretty sure I caught an NBC rerun of it at least once.)

So SNL considered these summer shows to be part of the prior season.

Another sketch comedy show, SCTV, used to follow SNL in Chicago during its first three years as a first-run syndicated half-hour series. It was picked up as a 90-minute Friday night series by NBC in 1981. The first set of 9 90-minute shows ran between May 15 and July 31, 1981, while the third season of the half-hour shows was still running in syndication -- so for a time in Chicago, a 90-minute version of SCTV aired on Friday night and a half-hour one aired on Saturday night.

Anyway, every online SCTV episode guide I have ever seen counts these "Cycle 1" (production cycle) shows as part of "Season 4" along with "Cycle 2" and "Cycle 3" which aired between October 16, 1981 and February 19, 1982, even though there clearly was a break as well as somewhat of a format change between "Cycle 1" and "Cycle 2." I think those first nine 90-minute shows are really something "in between" Seasons 3 and 4, but they are probably listed that way for the sake of simplicity.

Well, here I go, hijacking my own thread.

 

I would love to see this. This does remind me of something. I was a young kid (junior high/high school) when I was watching these. I was well aware that SNL was a "live" show (except in reruns) and I remember during the fifth season they did a prime-time one-hour version on tape called "The Best Of Saturday Night Live" combining segments from different shows. (I never saw those again, I wonder if they were even saved.)

I remember Richard Pryor was featured one week and just before it aired, Pryor was seriously injured in a fire at home, I think he was smoking in bed or something. I knew these were repeated segments but I remember thinking if Pryor didn't make it, it would be weird to see him hosting a supposed "live" show (even though I knew it would be a rerun). Fortunately, he did survive.

And actor Strother Martin hosted during the fifth season, and happened to die just before that show was to be repeated in the summer. I thought, how weird. I remember seeing the listing in TV Guide for that week, but I have read in the years since that NBC skipped that one and showed a rerun of a different show. I always thought it was repeated as scheduled, but I honestly don't remember all these years later if it was replaced, or if it was, what was actually shown.

I do remember when the show did get pre-empted, often it was for a special which was SNL-related, like "Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine And Gilda," or "Things We Did Last Summer," which featured cast members from the show. No "Mondo Video," though.

 

Strother Martin hosted April 19, 1980. He passed away August 1, and the following night's SNL rerun was Richard Benjamin & Paula Prentiss (originally aired April 5), so they must have done a last-minute switch.

They finally reran the Martin show April 25, 1981. Ironically, that was a fill-in for a show canceled due to the writers' strike (I've read that Dan Aykroyd was the potential host).

Pryor's accident was June 9, 1980, but I don't have a list of the prime-time 60-minute shows. They did rerun his one and only hosting slot from the 7th-ever SNL several times (April 10, 1976; January 8, 1977; March 14, 1981). You can read more about the '81 rerun on my blog here.

 

Here are the non-SNL Saturday night shows for the first five seasons:

Beginning November 1, 1975, the first Saturday of nearly every month NBC aired the news magazine Weekend in SNL's slot.
This lasted through June 3, 1978.

SNL was often pre-empted for sporting events:
11/29/75 - College Basketball
3/27/76 - Pro Track Classic
7/10/76 - World Team Tennis
2/12/77 - Track and Field Invitational
7/2/77 - Baseball
7/9/77 - World Team Tennis All-Star Matches
2/4/78 - US Olympic Track & Field Meet
12/30/78 - College Basketball
4/21/79 - Olympathon '79
12/29/79 - College Basketball

The rest was a mix of network specials, movies, and SNL-produced spinoffs:
6/19/76 - Friends
8/28/76 - People
4/30/77 - The TVTV Show
10/22/77 - The Great American Laugh-Off
12/24/77 - Sounds Of Christmas Eve (Doc Severinsen-hosted special)
1/14/78 - Off Hollywood (A satire of life in Southern California - sea monsters visiting a beach party, doings on a Hollywood casting couch and soul cleansing at a Los Angeles car wash)
8/19/78 - Le Disco (from Studio 54, with the Village People)
10/28/78 - Things We Did Last Summer
2/3/79 - Diary Of A Young Comic
3/31/79 - Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine & Gilda

 

Since I have some free time, here are some more non-SNL shows which aired in its time slot.

11/29/80 - Road Show
12/27/80 - All Kindsa Stuff
9/19/81 - Things We Did Last Summer
10/24/81 - Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine & Gilda
12/19/81 - College Basketball
1/16/82, 5/1/82, 6/5/82 - SCTV Network 90
2/13/82, 7/31/82 - Twilight Theater
10/16/82, 6/18/83 - Gilda Live
11/6/82, 7/30/83 - Twilight Theater II
5/28/83 - Celebrate America
10/29/83, 8/11/84, 11/24/84 - Friday Night Videos Special
12/17/83 - College Basketball
12/24/83 - Christmas - Rome 1983
2/4/84 - Late Night with David Letterman 2nd Anniversary
6/2/84 - Welcome To The Fun Zone
8/4/84 - David Letterman Special
1/26/85, 6/8/85 - Late Night with David Letterman 3rd Anniversary

At this point (which I well remember despising), Dick Ebersol started to slot in Saturday Night's Main Event wrestling every so often. It first pre-empted SNL on 5/11/85, continuing sporadically until 4/27/91.

 

Thank you for this info. Here's what I remember about "The Best Of Saturday Night Live." I believe it began as a one-shot special during Season 4, and then was made into a series during Season 5. Pretty sure it only ran 13 weeks.

(This was completely different from any later syndicated version of the show.)

The shows were normally an hour long, but certain ones (like the Elliott Gould one) were 90 minutes. They tried to feature material from different seasons so all eight "classic" regulars would be featured, but there was at least one occasion (featuring Michael Palin) where Chevy Chase did not appear. There was a lengthy viking sketch in that one which was in two parts, and IIRC they were originally performed in two different shows hosted by Palin during the same season (either third or fourth).

The opening was basically a shortened version of the Season 4 opening, with only one head shot for each regular instead of two. They took Chase's from a bumper in the show he guest-hosted during the third season.

When they started, each show would have a specific guest host, though the material might be combined from different nights where that person appeared. Later into the run, they were less specific and quit having a specific guest host, and sometimes multiple guest hosts would appear within the hour. When this happened, no guest host would be named but after the cast, Don Pardo would say, "and special guests..." and name any miscellaneous guest hosts who appeared in various segments.

Towards the end of the run, they were using quite a bit of material from the current season (1979-1980) which might have aired live a few months earlier, but still combining it with segments from earlier shows that featured Aykroyd, Belushi and Chase.

I know, pretty useless information, but I wonder if this is documented anywhere.

 

The dates for WWF Saturday Main events can be found here.
Saturday Night's Main Event - Wikipedia