Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975)

Genre

comedy

Country

United States

Length

1 season, 4 episodes

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 2 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A primetime variety show hosted by sports broadcaster Howard Cosell. It featured celebrity guests and cast members but struggled because the hosts lacked comedy experience. The show was cancelled after 18 episodes and is remembered as a famous failure.

disjointedawkwardambitiousold-fashionedlow-energyconfusedshort-lived

What happens

Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell is an American television variety show that aired on ABC from September 20, 1975, to January 17, 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 because Cosell and Arledge—both veterans of sports broadcasting—did not have any experience with comedy and variety programming. 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. Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell is consistently confused with the sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live. In October 1975, rival network NBC began airing the late night comedy show NBC's Saturday Night, the creation of producer Lorne Michaels. The shows did not compete for the same time slot. Cosell's Saturday Night Live aired at 8 p.m. ET/PT, whereas NBC's Saturday Night aired at 11:30 p.m. After Cosell's show was cancelled, the NBC show adopted the Saturday Night Live name (although that show continued to be introduced on camera as "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night"). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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