Talk:Saturday Night Live hosts

Untitled
Hey, what is the language used for this page ? Is it some new wiki markup for tables ? Jay 11:49, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes! It takes a little while to get used to, but it's surprisingly versatile. The guide to it is at m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables. - Seth Ilys 14:20, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link! Jay 17:20, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Page too long, can be split into 3 parts with 10 seasons each. I could have done it myself, but I don't know the new table markup. Jay 05:28, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello all -- I'd like to try something -- there's a pretty good site that has summaries of each episode, and I think that might be useful and intersting here. I'm going to try putting in links for the last few episodes. I won't do all of them right now, because it would take a lot of time, and I don't know if they'd get deleted by other users. But if you've got any feedback/thoughts on this, let me know. --Arcadian 19:25, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where does the information come from for the upcoming hosts and musical guests? It appears that projected hosts change from time to time – are they simply guesses? Should we indicate if they have been confirmed (e.g., listed as upcoming guest during a broadcast or on the official SNL website)? - —This unsigned comment was added by 70.92.228.126 (talk • contribs). 19 Mar 2006.

Liz Dole
Did Elizabeth Dole also come on the show with her husband on the November 16, 1996 episode? --Asbl 06:09, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Mike Myers and Kanye West
Was Mike Myers involved in the cold opening? I only recall him doing a bit with West just before West performed his first song of the night. 205.211.164.226 17:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * You are probably correct. Why don't you change it? --Asbl 19:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

SNL Specials
Should SNL specials (TBOs, Anniversaries, etc.) be listed in this page? They are technically episodes (not numerical episodes, but special ones). And sometimes they are hosted by people or characters. --WikiPlayer 21:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the answer to that question is no. Best of shows are clips from other shows thrown together. I think the guideline here should be if the show has original content, it should be included. Otherwise, it should be excluded. --Asbl 00:03, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

What if the clip show has original content, such as the upcoming TBO? --WikiPlayer 05:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Will the upcoming Best of Episode have clips never before aired? Usually "best of" episodes are rebroadcasting of previously broadcasted content. Depending on how much new content is presented should influence how we list it. If only one or two new cartoons are presented, we should list it as a footnote to the table for Season 31 (similar to the footnote of Season 6). --Asbl 11:28, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course there wouldn't be new Funhouse cartoons, but new material was made, and for example, the monologue can be seen at the NBC video. --WikiPlayer 16:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I watched the video in the link provided, and I am not quite clear on what exactly does this video mean. Will this be the opening for the Best Of episode? If so, we can put at the bottom of the table a comment saying something to the effect of "the Best of Funhouse episodes shown on April 29, 2006, showcased a new funhouse clip to introduce the episode (with a link to the video that you already provide)." --Asbl 17:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, not all SNL specials are simple clip shows. For example, the original "SNL goes Commercial (1991)" was hosted by Victoria Jackson and Kevin Nealon. The 2005 version was hosted by Will Ferrell. There were Anniversaries for the 10th, 15th and 25th. "SNL: 25 Years of Music" had five hosts, each detailing a 5-year span in SNL's music history. While the 1992 Presidential Bash was probably just a clip show, the 2004 version was hosted by Bill Clinton (played by Darrell Hammond, with appearances by Will Forte and Seth Meyers as George W. Bush and John Kerry, Darrell also playing Al Gore and Dick Cheney. According to imdb, the 2000 Presidential Bash featured new material by George W. Bush, Al Gore, George Bush Sr., Will Ferrell, Chris Parnell, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Rachel Dratch, Darrell Hammond, Val Kilmer, and Jesse Ventura. "Saturday Night Live Christmas (1999)" was non-hosted, while "Saturday Night Live Christmas 2002" was hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey, and rebroadcast the following year as ""Saturday Night Live Christmas 2003". The Weekend Update Halftime Special of 2003 featured the entire SNL cast without Seth Meyers, Rachel Dratch, and Fred Armisen. "Things We Did Last Summer" was a 1977 special featuring new material. --WikiPlayer 20:43, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess the solution then is to create a table just for special episodes (and move the current Mardi Gras Special from Season 2 to it). If the table gets too big, we can covert it to its own article. --Asbl 20:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Episode numbers
I've compiled the actual Broadway Video show numbers and rerun airdates for most of the series. Perhaps there could be a way to incorporate these into the listing?

74.115.226.191 09:43, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Panic! At the Disco
Someone added a note in the article that they have a show the same night as their scheduled SNL appearance. Is this true? --zenohockey 05:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

November 11th show
The November 11th show is not Stephen Colbert. It's someone who has hosted before and who hosted last season, according to 2 of the castmembers. Of course, that could change.

Tina Fey
"During the cold opening it is likly that Lorne Michaels gets his sandwich from former cast member Tina Fey, though hard to know."

This didn't happen - the applause was for Borat, who came on stage offcamera to get ready for his segment right after Lorne's bit. (I was in the audience.)

Gwen Stefani
The site that "confirmed" her for December 9th (http://www.beacon-street.net/) actually says that it is UNCONFIRMED. From the site:

DEC. 9, 2006: Saturday Night Live (TBA) (To be announced listed dates are not confirmed.) Rorschach 02:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

episode 529 remark
"The Roots were the initial backup band for Jay-Z but a last minute scheduling conflict forced him to gather a last minute house band. If this initial plan was executed, this would mark the first time an established group appeared on SNL as a backup band for another musical guest three times."

IF executed, WOULD HAVE been the FIRST occurence of a band backing up another guest THREE times.

This is pretty confusing, and I doubt this would qualify as a notable even if it DID happen. Deleting. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.162.240.250 (talk) 19:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Unsourced information problem
Again, unsourced rumors (discussing future hosts/musical guests) shouldn't find any place on that page.

January 20th episode Jeremy Piven/AFI
This was confirmed today by NBCMV. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.52.6.154 (talk) 20:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

Page length
This article is obviously too long (>150KB), so it should be split into sections. I'd think groups of 5 or 10 seasons would be manageable, but there's always the option of doing each season individually. And, following the split, would we want this page to be basically a list of links, or would we want to transclude the separate articles onto this one? Please comment. Anon 03:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's a much better idea to simply agree on notable trivia and skim the page down to something manageable. -- Viewdrix 03:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposing certain types of notes that can be removed.
The page is simply too long, mostly because the latest seasons are bloated with useless information. Simply put, it's clear that not much can be sourced, but there's a certain level of obscure facts that need sourcing, and just plain ultra-detailed and nitpicking information that is not important in regards to a show with over 600 90 minute episodes. I tried removing a large amount of these solely from the latest season or two a few weeks ago, and was reverted with someone asking why I hadn't brought it up on the Talk page. I tried to a few days ago in the above Page length section, and I will again now. If no one responds, I'll remove it myself. If someone does reply, feel free to add or challenge any of these. Things I propose can be removed:
 * Hosts or musical guests that producers wanted to appear on an episode, but didn't. Unless they were scheduled and promoted as a host, like when Jennifer Garner was replaced by Topher Grace on January 15, 2005, it's far too much original research and/or unsourced. Situations like Garner/Grace are fine.
 * Sketches cut from dress rehearsal, or cut from a previous dress rehearsal but made it to future show's broadcast. It's not only something that relies on original research by dress rehearsal audiences, but it's also far too common for a dress rehearsal sketch to be cut. Cases like the 700 Gang animated opening replacing a cut Hardball sketch, which was unprecedented and sourced to snltranscripts.com, are fine.
 * Sketches that didn't air because they ran out of time. Far too common and far too much original research.
 * Rerun fake commercials. Far too common, unimportant.
 * Sketches cut between the NBC version and the Comedy Central/E! versions solely because of time, not because they were controversial. Too many episodes to bloat the list with this unimportant stuff. Similarly, stuff like how the Digital Short The Tangent aired on a different episode in the E! version.
 * People remaining in costumes of the last sketch for goodnights. Common, unimportant.
 * Stating that the episodes was reran and on what date for no particular reason. Almost every episode has been rerun. It's unimportant. If it was rerun for a very special and interesting reason, sure. "The episode reran three weeks later" or even that Jack Black's 2005 Christmas episode reran a year later for the 4th time is unimportant.
 * Opinions like "Peter Sarsgaard flubbed many lines throughout the episode and looked very agitated at the end of the SARS guard commercial." 'Looked very agitated' is especially editorializing, though 'flubbed many lines' is still based on the viewer's opinion. Unless it got them banned from the show or infamous, it doesn't seem important.
 * Music used in sketches. Not what the musical guest played, but stuff like "the theme for the original Casino Royale" from Peyton Manning's episode this year, or even "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap in the Digital Short. This is unimportant in the long run.
 * "This sketch was a parody of this". Unimportant, far, far too common to list them.
 * Running tallies of "this is the second cast member of The Office to host" (for example). Unimportant. If this, then why not just list every show or movie the host has ever done, and how many other cast members hosted before?
 * Small goofs. Darrell Hammond's moustache falling off, causing Ludacris to ad lib. The Shins' intstruments being heard during a live sketch by accident (which I added myself). Graphics appearing in the wrong sketches. Too unimportant to bloat the list.

Some ideas. There are, of course, a bunch of similar though unique pointless trivia that could be removed too, but too much to list here. Thoughts? -- Viewdrix 20:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I fully support this. These details are just clutter and also have recentism issues.  Go ahead with it. Biggspowd 13:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What about songs performed by musical guests? for the last few seasons, these are listed, but for earlier seasons many are not unless notable, like Sinéad O'Connor and Nirvana Doc Strange 18:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally, I thought that that, or just counting how many sketches the hosts were in, were notable enough, but earlier episodes that existed before Wikipedia were near impossible to know. I'm very much considering making even recent seasons, unless they have events notable like what is found within the earlier season, to have almost all notes cut. Thoughts? -- Viewdrix 20:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Did you really have to delete all the trivia for the Shins episode? Doc Strange 10:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

This really needs to be done soon. This is currently the 83rd-longest page on Wikipedia. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 03:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I initially defended keeping all the remarks, but in retrospect, it's nothing but a bunch of trivia, so I agree that it needs cleaning up. Anthony Rupert 19:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Episode 626 regarding Robert Smigel
"During the opening credits, there was an announcement for "A Cartoon By Robert Smigel," but no cartoon appeared in this episode."

Certainly it wasn't in the style of the TV Funhouse cartoons, but could Smigel have been behind the cartoons in the American colonisation sketch? Perhaps this was the cartoon the opening credits were referring to? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.72.7 (talk) 16:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Episode Numbers During The Strike
Just for housekeeping purposes, shouldn't we stop listing numbers and dates for upcoming shows during the WGA strike? Snowfire51 04:19, 15 November 2007 (UTC)


 * There doesn't seem to be opposition to this, so I've deleted the show numbers for the shows cancelled because of the writers strike. I've also taken the rest of Season 33 and placed it inside a comment, so it can be returned when the strike ends, hopefully soon. Snowfire51 (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Made a series of changes
I just finished a series of changes to try to make this article more verifiable and its topic clearer so that list membership is less arbitrary. Other changes were an attempt to follow MOS:BETTER more closely. I was tempted to remove Saturday Night Live hosts because IMHO it fails WP:NOTE but I've made so many other changes to the article that I'll leave it to others to decide whether that section belongs. 72.244.206.89 (talk) 10:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

A radical concept
Instead of breaking it down by profession (or even in addition to), why not just have a list of EVERY host? You know, since that's the page topic.Go4thAndDie (talk) 20:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Al Franken
What do you guys think about adding Al Franken to the political figures section? --Zaiger (talk) 14:43, 29 November 2011 (UTC)