LAWRENCE, Kan. – Who knew it would take over 15 years for the chinks in NBC’s late night armor to show? Indeed, what goes around seems to be coming around for the network that once branded itself “America’s Late Night Leader.”
It’s becoming clear that the decisions NBC made in 1991 set the stage for the giant mess currently waiting at its doorstep.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – With every episode of the current season of Saturday Night Live, it seems as if the show’s production crew has lost its touch.
Part of the problem is Don Roy King, the show’s new director. His qualifications were suspect in the first place, and as each week passes, it has become clear that he has no business directing the long-running variety show. His direction of SNL’s comedy sketches has been subpar at best, and he has done a horrendous job cutting the music performances. But King isn’t the only one to blame.
The show’s producer Steve Higgins has somehow managed to keep his job amid the program’s plummetting ratings, and the timing of this season’s shows has been some of the worst in recent memory. For two straight weeks, there have been issues with how much time is left at the end of the show. The final sketch of last week’s episode hosted by Annette Bening had to be prematurely cut off because the show was going too long. For this week’s show hosted by Justin Timberlake, there wasn’t even enough time for a sketch in the last segment of the show. Instead, the SNL band played on camera before the final commercial break.
LAWRENCE, Kan. — Saturday Night Live may have suffered one of the biggest losses in the show’s 32-year history. The show returned last weekend without director Beth McCarthy Miller calling the shots, for the first time in 11 years. Reports from USA Today and Variety have been unclear about who made the decision to end McCarthy Miller’s reign as director, and it’s even more baffling how Don Roy King was chosen as her replacement.
McCarthy Miller came to SNL after rising to the rank of senior director at MTV before leaving to direct The Jon Stewart Show, whose short lifespan perfectly coincided with the late Dave Wilson’s retirement from SNL. Wilson’s departure, however, appeared to have been far more premeditated as a live shot in the control room showed him salute at the close of the 1994-95 season finale. McCarthy Miller had no such curtain call.
ROSWELL, Ga. – SNL wrapped up its 30th season with an unfortunate performance by both the on and off-air crew. The writing continued to lag, as writing supervisor Paula Pell ended her time at the show. One careless tech mistake in a UPN parody and questionable staging for Coldplay ended the show’s third decade in disappointing fashion. Despite NBC’s stellar coverage of the triumphant display by Afleet Alex in the 130th running of The Preakness Stakes, led by producer David Michaels and director John Gonzalez, at Maryland’s Pimlico Race Course, the SNL finale fell short of an otherwise superb day for the network. Whether producer Steve Higgins is where the change must be made is for the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels to decide. Since the departure of Tim Herlihy in the late-1990s, Higgins has been at the helm with director Beth McCarthy Miller. McCarthy Miller, who dodged the bullet of being the director behind the disastrous Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, has remained in good standing at SNL although she was passed over by alma mater MTV for the 2004 Video Music Awards. She deserves to remain in her position on the show, but better musical guests need to be booked throughout the season in order to ensure that she has good material to work with. Furthermore, tech errors must be addressed before the show converts to high definition in coming years.
ROSWELL, Ga. – After Johnny Knoxville hosted one of the funniest episodes of Saturday Night Live all season, and possibly one of the funniest in the last few years, Will Ferrell returned last Saturday to host one of the worst SNLs I have ever seen. Aside from the “Cold Open” and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” the show got worse by the minute.
To add to the problems, SNL has been technically unsound for many of the past few episodes, a fact that is inexcusable. I have had many experiences with remote sports productions that have gone smoothly despite being in a new location every week, facing new challenges in each venue and juggling issues arising from producing TV for both standard and high definition. A show like SNL that is shot in a studio with its own control room in standard definition has no reason to be experiencing tech problems on a regular basis. Many of these errors have been made by operators rather than equipment. The show hosted by Tom Brady had several graphics that were put on screen at the wrong time; the Cameron Diaz-hosted episode was horribly flawed with misplaced or poorly-timed visual effects (like the pixelated blur made famous by “COPS”); and the Ferrell show most notably featured a cut to something other than a camera (still not sure what it was) during one of the sketches.