NBC's early A.M. reruns of old Saturday Night Live episodes are finally reaching back to seasons not produced by Lorne Michaels. Tonight, they're running a 1983 show hosted by Robin Williams and featuring the cast that included Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Jim Belushi and others. Next week's is supposed to be the one that followed, hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis.
This change in programming may be related to the fact that the E! Network recently secured what has been described as the entire SNL library, none of which they are currently running. NBC probably held back the right to run their one episode per week but if so, there's probably a contract provision that restricts them to certain seasons, or perhaps it rotates. Either way, I appreciate the chance to see some of the older episodes that aren't run as often. And the nice thing is that NBC All Night (or whatever they call it) airs the full shows instead of the hour cutdowns.