I have grown to loathe Saturday Night Live. In the last couple years, the only time the show seems to be funny is when former cast members like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler or Will Ferrell make guest appearances. We'll just throw Betty White in there for good measure, too.
But that's not the only reason I have a dislike for the show now; it's the overcrowded, underwhelming 90 minute debacle that the show has become. Ratings have declined, the show won't have any veteran cast members other than Kenan Thompson after this season, and these things make it clear that they are currently in a rebuilding season.
The show has been in this position many times before, but they haven't really had to deal with rebuilding seasons since the 80s and early 90s. In those cases, the show was often on the verge of cancellation, and series creator Lorne Michaels has stated that there were a few times where he's had to beg for another season and clean house in order to get it.
Right now, SNL needs some consistency, and here's what I'd do as a network exec to get the show back on the right track.
1: Cut the show to 60 minutes.
By the time you've reached the 70 minute mark or so, the only things left are the last musical performance and the goodbye. The opening sketch usually isn't funny and is really only a lead in to the credits. I say we cut everything down. All That, Nickelodeon's popular children's sketch show, wasn't live, but they did everything they needed to do in 30 FRIGGIN MINUTES. They had an opening Green Room sketch, an intro, roughly 5 sketches, and a musical guest. Why can't SNL do all of that in 60 minutes? Basically, the SNL staff takes what Second City Comedy takes months to do in putting a show together, and crams it into a week. To do that effectively week in and week out, you need people that can handle that sort of rigor, and I don't know if the current cast can do that. If I had one or two less sketches each week, and they were shorter, I could probably make them funnier in the long run, since I have more time to work with less. Less is more, people. I'd rather see the cast put together eight funny sketches than thirteen, with only three of them actually being funny.
2: Monitor the celebrity guest
I know that being the celebirty guest comes with some prestige, but it goes farther than I could ever imagine. Apparently the host, along with Lorne Michaels, gets the final say on which sketches will air and which ones won't. That's a lot of power to give to someone who may not be that funny in the first place. I think the position as host of SNL is reward enough that you don't need to give someone that much rope. And then they might not even be funny in their own sketches! Okay, sometimes they are. But what holds true is that more often than not, they aren't funny, and are normally thrown into skits that don't take advantage of their brand of humor. If I'm going to give someone that kind of power, they've got to have a proven comedy repertoire- Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are good examples, Gabourey Sidibe is not.
3: Cut the musical performances to one
The musical guest performs twice, and let's be honest- unless the musical guest is a scantily clad woman, nobody ever watches both performances. Cut it to one, and merge it with the end of the show- that saves time on the back end.
4: Change the show's time.
Why is this show on at 10:30 at night? They do nothing different at 10:30 than what I see on TV two hours before. I know I've been preaching consistency, and this is the least consistent thing I could possibly suggest, since the show has been in this timeslot for years, but if the show airs at that time, I at least want to see or hear something more vulgar. Otherwise, what's the difference in putting the show on at 8 or 9 PM?
I really want to like SNL, but they're trying my patience.
