Late Show UK

The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien has been nominated at this year’s Emmy Awards.

The now defunct NBC show is nominated for “Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series” against The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live and Real Time With Bill Maher.

Conan tweeted “Congrats to my staff on 4 Emmy nominations. This bodes well for the future of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien”.

Jay Leno spoke about the nominations for The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien on his show this week, saying “the big show business news is that the Emmy nominations were announced today… the good news: The Tonight Show got four nominations! The bad news: I didn’t get one of them… remember there’s no ‘me’ in Emmy”.

Saturday Night Live is also nominated in the “Guest Actress in a Comedy Series” category for Betty White and Tina Fey’s appearances on the show.

TV Squad – “Emmy Awards 2010 Nominees List”
TV Guide – “Jay Leno Pokes Fun at Losing Emmy Nominations to Conan O’Brien”
The Associated Press – “Reactions to the 62nd annual Emmy nominations”

Tina Fey will return to Saturday Night Live as guest host.

The former regular cast member of SNL will be back in April and it’s thought she might reprise her role as Sarah Palin, which brought her huge recognition throughout the US elections.

When asked about returning to SNL as the former Governor of Alaska she said “It’s inevitable that we’ll try it, at least… we’ll see if it makes it to air”.

Yahoo! News – “You betcha: Fey’s ‘SNL’ return as Palin is likely”

The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles last night. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart won the award for “Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series” & the award for “Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series”. Justin Timberlake won the award for “Best Guest Actor, Comedy” for hosting Saturday Night Live. The award for “Best Guest Actress, Comedy” went to Tina Fey for her work on Saturday Night Live (particularly for her Sarah Palin impersonation).

Wikipedia – “61st Primetime Emmy Awards”
Official 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards website – Nominees & Winners
Examiner.com – “Complete List of Emmy Winners (and My Reactions)”
Digital Spy – “Emmy Awards 2009: The Winners”

Amy Poehler will be returning to Saturday Night Live for two shows in September.

Amy – who left the show in December – will “appear in two prime-time specials planned for the fall”, The New York Times reports.

The specials will air on the 17th September and the 24th September (called Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update Thursday). Amy briefly returned to the show in May in SNL’s season finale.

NY Times – “Have a Pleasant Tomorrow: Amy Poehler Plans ‘Weekend Update’ Return”

The nominations for the 2009 Emmy Awards have been announced.

Read the rest of this entry »

NBC have officially announced their fall lineup.

It’s been previously said The Jay Leno Show will start on the 14th September, and this has now been confirmed in this fall lineup release. Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday will start on the 17th September.

The Jay Leno Show will be stripped across the week Monday-Friday at 10pm in a one-hour timeslot. Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday will air every Thursday night at 8pm in a 30-minute timeslot.

There are some preview videos for The Jay Leno Show, but they only seem to be available for people in the US.

NBC – Fall Preview 2009/2010

We’ve started a new petition. This is a petition to show there’s a fanbase for Saturday Night Live in the UK and with a view to get the show back on UK television on Freeview, cable or satellite. Saturday Night Live has been aired on UK television in the past but channels seem to shunt it around the schedules every week. It recently aired on ITV4, but has also appeared on Paramount Comedy in the past.

Especially following the US Elections in 2008, the show gained a huge following in America and continues to do so. Saturday Night Live would be hugly popular in the UK as well, if it was shown on a channel at a reasonable time (ITV4 used to air it at ridiculously late times at night / the early hours of the morning), which was the main reason why no one was watching it – it was on too late.

Click here to visit our Petitions page.

The Saturday Night Live 2-hour special that aired on NBC on Monday (the eve before Election Day in the US) was a huge ratings success. The special programme “was seen by 14.4 million people” according to Journal Now, and eNews 2.0 reports “according to Nielsen estimations, NBC won most viewers with ages between 18 and 49″.

The Monday night show had impressions by Amy Poehler (as Hillary Clinton), Fred Armisen (as Barack Obama) and Darrell Hammond (as John McCain). The real Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin were also on the show introducing classic SNL clips, etc.

JournalNow.com asks “what will Saturday Night Live do without the 2008 presidential election to mock?”. Good question.

Hulu.com – Clips from the SNL Presidential Bash 2008 (the videos work in the UK)
Journal Now – “Election’s end may collapse SNL’s…readiness for prime time”
eNews 2.0 – “Obama Won; and So Did NBC with “SNL””

Presidential candidate John McCain made an appearance on Saturday Night Live last Saturday (1st November).

TV Guide’s review of the episode says “They wasted no time putting McCain to use, as he was joined by Tina as Palin (!) to make their last-minute plea to voters while hawking products on QVC. Apparently the campaign, as Tina points out, spent a little too much money on Palin’s clothes and couldn’t afford to match Sen. Obama’s three-network infomercial”.

Actor Ben Affleck was the guest host on the show and American Idol star David Cook performed.

There is a two hour special show tonight (3rd November) on the eve before the US Election. The two hour special is called the SNL Presidential Bash 2008 and special guests will make appearances on the show. The two hour special will air at 9/8c on Monday 3rd November on NBC.

TV Guide – “SNL Episode Recap: Ben Affleck Hosts, David Cook Performs”
NBC.com – Saturday Night Live – “McCain QVC Open” (Video clip)

In the run up to the US Election on the 4th November, NBC will be airing some special Thursday editions of Saturday Night Live throughout October. The extra Thursday shows will be 30 minutes long and – like the normal Saturday editions – will be live. The Thursday shows will air at 9.30pm ET in the US on the 9th, 16th and 23rd October – they are called Saturday
Night Live Weekend Update Thursday. The Saturday editions will continue to run as normal every Saturday throughout October.

Late Show UK – Guest Listings – Saturday Night Live
Chicago Sun-Times – “SNL going week day prime time LIVE before the election”

Democrat Barack Obama appeared on the Late Show earlier this week ahead of the US Presidential elections in November. Obama spoke about his recent comments about putting lipstick on a pig (referring to the Republican’s election stance) when Letterman asked him if he had ever tried to actually put lipstick on a pig. Barack said he hadn’t “but I think it might be fun to try”. Senator Barack Obama’s appearance on the 10th September 2008 show was his 5th visit to the Late Show. Obama said “the policies of John McCain would be the pig”.

In other news, Barack Obama will also appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend – the first episode of the new season. AFP says “quite what the Democratic presidential hopeful will do on the program this time is still being worked out, the aides said, but it is a safe bet that the hosts will extract comedy value out of some of the recent campaign sparring”.

WashingtonPost.com (The Trail) – “Obama on Letterman Talks Lipstick & Pigs”
AFP – “Obama returns to cult comedy show”
YouTube – Video clip from the Barack Obama interview on the Late Show

Michael Phelps – eight time gold medal winner at this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing – will host Saturday Night Live in it’s first new episode on the 13th September. NBC was the American broadcaster of the Olympic Games 2008 so it seems appropriate for Phelps to host Saturday Night Live on NBC. The Olympic swimmer will need to adapt to comedy for the role. He will be joined by rapper Lil Wayne.

The Telegraph says “Phelps has been besieged with showbusiness and commercial offers since he became the most decorated Olympian in history earlier this month” and “the 23-year-old will be joined by rapper Lil Wayne as co-host, after Phelps revealed that he listens to New Oreans hip hop star on his iPod before races”.

Telegraph – “Michael Phelps to host Saturday Night Live”

The nominations for this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards are in, and some of your favourite talk shows & comedy shows are up for the “Variety, Music or Comedy Series” award – The Colbert Report (Comedy Central), The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central), the Late Show With David Letterman (CBS), Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO) and Saturday Night Live (NBC) are all nominated. This year will be the 60th edition of the Primetime Emmy Awards. The ceremony will take place on Sunday 21st September in Los Angeles.

The official website for the Primetime Emmy Awards
Digital Spy – “‘Mad Men’, ’30 Rock’ dominate Emmy noms”

It has been confirmed from the Duty Office at ITV that Saturday Night Live will no longer be shown on ITV4. Saturday Night Live launched on ITV4 on 4th November 2006 with much publicity, shortly after the Late Show With David Letterman got dropped from the channel. The ITV Duty Office says “there are no plans to show any more episodes of Saturday Night Live”. Saturday Night Live used to air in the early hours of the morning when it was on ITV4, so if the show was deemed unsuccessful on the channel, this would probably be the reason why. ITV4 did a similar thing with Letterman, where they scheduled the Late Show for the ‘graveyard shift’ as well. Here’s hoping another channel will pick up SNL, and let’s hope it’s given a decent timeslot – like Diva TV picked up the Late Show.

We now provide Saturday Night Live guest listings and some other details about the programme. Saturday Night Live content is now available on the Guest Listings page and the Where To Watch page. Airdates in Guest Listings are for the US. UK audiences can see Saturday Night Live on ITV4 on a delay, which varies – as do their airtimes, so check your TV listings every week.

13th March Update: Saturday Night Live On ITV4 Is No More

Guest Listings | Where To Watch