More SNL Rarities…The Original SNL With Howard Cosell

You may be surprised to know that the original “Saturday Night Live” on ABC had more in common with SNL than just the name! It also had “The Prime Time Players” which were Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest!

As we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the 90 minute late night sketch show on NBC, we have to remember that in the beginning the show as titled “NBC’s Saturday Night”.

“Saturday Night Live” would have been a much better name, but that title was already in use at ABC. Below is a rare clip of the show’s opening with host Howard Cosell. Fortunately for everyone, the show only aired for 18 weeks. It was actually canceled just three weeks into the run, but ABC kept it on to fill the hole in it’s schedule.

ABC’s show ran from September 1975 till January 1976 and was produced by Roone Arledge. The show was later remembered by its director Don Mischer as “one of the greatest disasters in the history of television”, largely due to the fact that Cosell and Arledge, both veterans of sports broadcasting, were entirely unfamiliar with comedy and variety programming.

The show taped 15 new episodes at The Ed Sullivan Theater and it was Arledge’s idea to try and recapture the family show appeal of Sullivan who had been off the air for about three years.

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 who performed live via satellite from the UK.

The shows also featured Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest as regular comedy performers, dubbed “The Prime Time Players”. Later, when “NBC Saturday Night” was granted use of the SNL name by ABC, we also got “The Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players” which ironically also counted the three “Prime Time Players” as cast members over the years. Enjoy and Share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS2BtthZOug

This is from the original Saturday Night Live, hosted by Howard Cosell, Mark Wilson had just won his second Magician of the Year awards, and finished his Las…

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