Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell

Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell
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Format	Sketch comedy, Comedy, Variety
Starring	Howard Cosell Bill Murray Brian Doyle-Murray Christopher Guest
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	18
Production
Executive producer(s)	Roone Arledge
Running time	48 minutes
Production company(s)	ABC
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Picture format	480i (SDTV)
Original run	September 20, 1975 – January 17, 1976

Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell is a program that ran on ABC from September 1975 to January 1976, hosted by Howard Cosell and executive-produced by Roone Arledge. The series ran for 18 episodes before being cancelled. The show was later remembered by its director Don Mischer as "one of the greatest disasters in the history of television," largely due to Cosell and Arledge's unfamiliarity with comedy and variety programming.

The same year, NBC began airing a late night comedy show produced by Lorne Michaels titled Saturday Night; after Cosell's show was cancelled, the NBC show renamed itself Saturday Night Live. The shows did not directly compete, as Cosell's Saturday Night Live aired at 8 p.m. EST/PST, whereas NBC's Saturday Night aired at 11:30 p.m. Despite having highly notable celebrities both as cast members and guests, Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell has never been made available on home video.

History

Cast and guests

The Cosell show featured Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest as regular comedy performers, dubbed "The Prime Time Players". In response, the NBC show called its regular performers "the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players". Ironically, all three eventually became part of "the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players". Billy Crystal, who appeared on the premiere episode of Cosell's program, was also scheduled to appear on the premiere episode of the NBC show but was bumped when the show ran long; he later joined that program's cast with Christopher Guest. Cosell himself guest-hosted the NBC program a decade later.

The premiere episode featured celebrity guests Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Paul Anka, Siegfried and Roy, the cast of the Broadway version of The Wiz, tennis pro Jimmy Connors and John Denver. The episode's musical guest was the Bay City Rollers, whom Cosell dubbed "the next" British phenomenon.

Cancellation

Saturday Night Live's director Don Mischer remembers the show as hectic and unprepared, and has recalled one particular episode wherein executive producer Roone Arledge discovered that Lionel Hampton was in New York, and invited the musician to appear on the show an hour before the show was set to go on the air. The show fared poorly among critics and audiences alike, with TV Guide calling it "dead on arrival, with a cringingly awkward host." Alan King, the show's "executive in charge of comedy," later admitted that it was difficult trying to turn Cosell into a variety show host, saying that he "made Ed Sullivan look like Buster Keaton."

Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell was canceled on January 17, 1976, after only 18 episodes. A year later, in 1977, NBC's Saturday Night was renamed Saturday Night Live.

Reception

In 2002 TV Guide ranked the series number 37 on its '50 Worst TV Shows of All Time' list.

Episodes

Only three episodes are known to survive:

• September 20, 1975: Billy Crystal, Frank Sinatra, Bay City Rollers
• October 11, 1975: Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, The Rockettes
• November 8, 1975: Roy Clark, Billy Crystal, Ted Kennedy, Chita Rivera as Herself/Velma Kelly, and Gwen Verdon as Herself/Roxie Hart

External links

• Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell at the Internet Movie Database
• Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell at TV.com