Lively
Out here on the West Coast, new episodes of Saturday Night Live are broadcast twice. First at 8:30, which is 11:30 EST, so we can watch it live, and then again in a rebroadcast at 11:30 in its normal slot*.
Early on, Aidy Bryant comes out and sings a song about Baby Boomers. However, in a flat out technical mistake, she was given a chyron that was meant to be used later. So I decided to watch the second showing just to see if they would (and could) remove it. Sure enough, in the rebroadcast it was gone.
So now wonder how many changes do they regularly make? It's known that they do a full dress rehearsal in front of a live audience before they go on the air. I've often wondered if something completely fails in the regular show if they use a previous performance because it worked better.
I don't think I'll ever know. I don't really want to watch the show twice for comparison. I often don't want to watch it once.
*Actually, SNL starts at 11:29 for some reason. I guess Lorne Michaels has a lot of clout at NBC.
**They go to the game show well far too often.
posted by LAGuy @ 9:29 AM
2 Comments:
If I understand you correctly, there are two performances in front of a live audience on Saturday:
(1) The "dress rehearsal."
(2) The "regular show."
From your post, it seems that (in theory, at least most of the time) #2 is the one that will be broadcast. But is #2 broadcast in real time? In other words, suppose it's 11:50 PM ET, and Boston viewers are watching Kate McKinnon make a joke: Did she actually make that joke only a few seconds earlier, in real-time?
Or is there a significant delay between the filming of #2 and the broadcast? I've often wondered if this were the case. It would mean that the time gaps between two successive skits (as seen by the studio audience) have no relationship to the time gaps between skits (as seen on TV).
And one more question. I've always assumed that most of the audience in the #2 performance are the general public who have gone to the trouble of getting tickets. Is the audience for #1 the same group (who would therefore see the show twice), a different group drawn from the general public, or something else?
The show is broadcast live, in real time. I don't believe there's even a slight time delay to bleep out profanity. (Of course, some of the show is pre-taped. The fake commercials, for instance, and, more and more, other special comedy bits.) Because of this, in fact, there have been a number of embarrassing moments in the show's history.
However, I have heard, though haven't confirmed, that they sometimes replace poor performances with better ones done in dress rehearsal--not just in reruns shown months later, but even in the later showing on the West Coast.
If true, this doesn't bother me, since I'd rather see the good performance. In fact, the regular show is shaped by the dress rehearsal--it's a way of discovering what works and what doesn't, and in between dress and the show itself, it's common that some sketches are cut and their order is rearranged.
The dress rehearsal and the live show are done in front of different audiences. (The logistics of keeping a crowd there for hours would be bad enough--I believe dress starts at 8 pm--but having the same audience watch the same show twice would be disastrous for the comedy.)
Both shows are done in front of the general public. As to who gets in, I guess whoever can get tickets. I have to assume the hot ticket is the actual show, not the rehearsal (unless you go to bed really early).
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