by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
All good things must come to an end, and, yet….SNL? And, yet, apparently there are rumblings within NBCUniversal top brass of doing just that once Lorne Michaels retires after 50 years after the 2025 season. (The show first aired in 1975.)
The only reason why I could maybe see the show being canceled is TV executives are so wealthy and oblivious to how the average person interacts with TV that they would see the show strictly from a monetary standpoint and not from an entertainment or cultural metric. To them, it’s too expensive for the ratings it gets and so, once Michaels isn’t there to protect the show, it’s time for it to go.
And, yet, SNL serves as such a crucial element in the comedy entertainment industrial complex — and has so many very powerful fans and allies in the industry that I suspect any attempt to actually end the show once and for all would come under a huge amount fire. A lot of people, young and old, really love SNL and would be shocked if it was canceled.
But I know how the real world works and there’s probably a 50 / 50 chance that SNL will, in fact, be canceled whenever Lorne Michaels retires. He may even ask that it be canceled so there’s no cruddy replacement with its name but none of the talent. That’s kind of a dark scenario, though.
More likely, I could see Michaels negotiating for SNL to move to ABC or CBS with some sort of assurance that it would live on in the streaming era for decades to come. Or, the TV suits at NBCUniversal could all scare the shit out of us, only to change their minds at the last moment and pick someone new to take over the show and we move on like nothing happened. Like how Trump wanted to turn the Kennedy blue Airforce 1 into something painted like a WWE event…and then nothing happened.
So, we’ll see.
