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The first season of ''Saturday Night Live'', an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 11, 1975, and July 31, 1976. ==History== In 1974, NBC ''Tonight Show'' host Johnny Carson requested that the weekend broadcasts of "Best of Carson" (officially known as ''The Weekend Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'') come to an end (back then, ''The Tonight Show'' was a 90-minute program), so that Carson could take two weeknights off and NBC would thus air those repeats on those nights rather than feed them to affiliates for broadcast on either Saturdays or Sundays. Given Carson's undisputed status as the king of late-night television, NBC heard his request as an ultimatum, fearing he might use the issue as grounds to defect to either ABC or CBS. To fill the gap, the network drew up some ideas and brought in Dick Ebersol – a protégé of legendary ABC Sports president Roone Arledge – to develop a 90-minute late-night variety show. Ebersol's first order of business was hiring a young Canadian producer named Lorne Michaels to be the show-runner.〔(SNL's Beginnings ) from NBC〕 Television production in New York was already in decline in the mid-1970s (''The Tonight Show'' had departed for Los Angeles two years prior), so NBC decided to base the show at their studios in Rockefeller Center to offset the overhead of maintaining those facilities. Michaels was given Studio 8H, a converted radio studio that prior to that point was most famous for having hosted Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1951, but was being used largely for network election coverage by the mid-1970s. When the first show aired on October 11, 1975 with George Carlin as its host, it was called ''NBC's Saturday Night'' because ABC featured a program at the same time titled ''Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell''. After ABC cancelled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to ''Saturday Night Live'' on March 26, 1977 (and subsequently picked up Bill Murray from Cosell's show in 1977, as well). Don Pardo introduced the cast on the first show as the "The not for ready, prime time players" instead of their actual name as "The Not Ready For Prime Time Players." The show was intended to have just six episodes. The original concept was for a comedy-variety show featuring young comedians, live musical performances, short films by Albert Brooks, and segments by Jim Henson featuring atypically adult and abstract characters from the Muppets world. Rather than have one permanent host, Michaels elected to have a different guest host each week (Albert Brooks was originally booked to be a permanent host, and claims it was his idea to have a different host each week). The first episode featured two musical guests (Billy Preston and Janis Ian), and the second episode, hosted by Paul Simon on October 18, was almost entirely a musical variety show with various acts. The Not Ready For Prime Time Players did not appear in this episode at all, other than as the bees with Simon telling them they were cancelled and Chase in the opening and "Weekend Update". Over the course of Season 1, sketch comedy would begin to dominate the show and ''SNL'' would more closely resemble its current format. Andy Kaufman made several appearances that were popular with the audience over the season, while ''The Muppets' Land of Gorch'' bits were regarded as a poor fit with the rest of the show. The "Land Of Gorch" sketches were essentially cancelled after episode 10, although the associated Muppet characters still made sporadic appearances after that. After one final appearance at the start of season two, the Muppet characters were permanently dropped from ''SNL''. During the season, Michaels appeared on-camera twice, on April 24 and May 22, to make an offer to The Beatles to reunite on the show. In the first appearance, he offered a certified check of $3000. In the second appearance, he increased his offer to $3,200 and free hotel accommodations. John Lennon and Paul McCartney later both admitted that they were watching ''SNL'' from Lennon's apartment on May 8, the episode after Michaels' first offer, and briefly toyed with actually going down to the studio, but decided to stay in the apartment because they were too tired.〔(This Day in Music Spotlight: Live from New York… It’s The Beatles! )〕〔(Paul McCartney On The Beatles Almost Reuniting On 'Saturday Night Live':... )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Saturday Night Live (season 1)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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