This weekend, NBC's Up All Night is scheduled to rerun the very first episode of Saturday Night Live from October 11, 1975. Not only that but it's the full, 90-minute version as opposed to the truncated hour that is sometimes aired.
I wrote a piece about this first show here. As you watch (if you watch), you might ask yourself what you'd have thought if you'd been an NBC exec that night. The broadcast was not unsuccessful, but also not all that indicative of what the show could or would become. One of the things I find fascinating about early SNL is the way it was more or less invented "on the air" over its first few programs…a luxury I do not think any show would be granted today. The first week, it showed signs of becoming a good, free-form variety show…but not the all-sketch show it soon became. As I understand it, there was some debate then as to whether the Guest Host slot was a way of trying out folks until one emerged as the person who ought to host every week…or if they really wanted to keep the show as amorphous as it seemed to be its first few weeks. In the end, they seemed to split the difference.
Last evening, I watched that "First Five Years of SNL" special that ran on NBC the other night. Those things are all a bit too self-congratulatory but I found it interesting. It would have been more interesting had it paid a bit of attention to Albert Brooks, The Muppets, Andy Kaufman, Harry Shearer, Father Guido Sarducci and a few other contributors. Supposedly, a longer version of this special is to be released on DVD in a few months. Perhaps some or all will get covered there.