Saturday Night Live season 7
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| Saturday Night Live Season 7 | |
|---|---|
| Season 7 | |
 The Saturday Night Live title card as seen in the opening credits of the 7th season. | |
| No. of episodes | 20 |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | October 3, 1981 – May 22, 1982 |
| Season chronology | |
Saturday Night Live aired its seventh season during the 1981–1982 television season on NBC. The seventh season started on October 3, 1981 and ended on May 22, 1982. A total of 20 episodes were broadcast.
Following the dismissal of producer Jean Doumanian and most of her cast members (repertory players Gilbert Gottfried, Ann Risley, and Charles Rocket and feature players Yvonne Hudson, Patrick Weathers, and Matthew Laurance), the show was shut down because of the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike.
Dick Ebersol, the program's developer, was hired as Doumanian's replacement. The new cast of Saturday Night Live for this season were the same ones from the episode Ebersol produced for April 11, 1981: Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky and Tony Rosato along with the Doumanian era's sole survivors Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius were fired following the April 1981 episode while Laurie Metcalf and unseen cast member Emily Prager were not asked back as cast members.
Ebersol then hired two new cast members, Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole, to fill the gap left by Metcalf and Prager.
Wanting to distance the show from its first five seasons, Ebersol cut the popular opening line Live from New York, It's Saturday Night! from the cold openings. In fact, sometimes cold openings were not even shown and the monologues were skipped over almost entirely. These changes were not permanent, as Ebersol decided to reverse them for the eighth season. The beginning of each episode was marked by the announcer saying "And now from New York, the most dangerous city in America, it's Saturday Night Live!".
Another thing he changed was Weekend Update. The segment went through its first name change and became "SNL Newsbreak". At the newsdesk was feature player Brian Doyle-Murray with Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole alternating as co-anchor. Doyle-Murray also became the first Weekend Update anchor to be a featured player while serving as anchor. The only other anchors to do this were Tina Fey, Colin Jost and Michael Che.
Additionally, this was the first season without Don Pardo (season 40 will be the next due to Don Pardo's death in 2014) as the show announcer. Instead the voice-overs were done by Mel Brandt, except for two episodes that aired in December 1981 when veteran NBC News announcer Bill Hanrahan handled such duties.
During the season, original cast member John Belushi died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin. The original airing of the episode hosted by Robert Urich had a tribute to Belushi.
This was also the final season for Doyle-Murray, Ebersole and Rosato. All were let go to make room for new cast members in the following season.
Cast
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bold denotes Weekend Update anchor