Saturday Night Live season 6. Will it be released? (1 Viewer)

[Bryan^H]

Well, I haven't heard anything yet on SNL season 6 being released. No news isn't necessarily good news. Oh well, as much as I wanted it to continue, looks like all of the fans of early 80's SNL are out of luck.

Any light at the end of the tunnel...encouraging words.....anything?

 

[Andrew Radke]

Really hard to say if they've given up, especially since the last few releases came out in the month of November. But the fate of season 6 (and beyond) is certainly one giant question mark. I for one would love to see the show continue, but in the same breath I'd like to see more than one release per year. But who knows? Maybe their only intention was to release the first 5 years. Maybe they plan to skip past the Ebersol years in favor of when Michaels returned to the helm. Maybe they'll go back to 'best-of' releases. WAY too many unanswered questions. lol. As far as I'm concerned, they should continue releasing these in chronological order.....but at a faster pace. The Murphy/Piscopo seasons are very funny and shouldn't be overlooked.....but then, I've said all this before. I guess what will be......will be.

 

[Charles Ellis]

This season has to be released- if anything, just to prove how bad it was! People seem to forget that in that season Eddie Murphy was hired only as a writer, not as a performer, yet somehow he managed to get his foot in the door and steal the show. From what I remember several people in the cast expected themselves to be The Next Big Thing, especially Charles Rocket, who was Jean Doumanian's pet. Hopefully they'll show the entire Charlene Tilton show, when Rocket dropped the 'F-bomb' and was immediately sacked. If people complain about how the show is now, all Lorne Michaels has to do is put out Season 6 on DVD as to say, 'see what happened without me?". Fortunately, the next year you had people like Julia Louis-Dreyfus (and future husband Brad Hall) joining Murphy and Joe Piscopo, who were among the few survivors of the sixth season.

 

[Jakerman1988]

I don't own any of the seasons of SNL yet, but I would love Season 6 to be released. I own a fan-made version of the season that I bought off of Ioffer.com earlier this year, but an official release would be welcomed.

 

[Bryan^H]

I'm going to try and contact Universal about a possible season 6 release.

 

[Jakerman1988]

It's really up to Lorne Michaels to have it released. He wasn't too fond of the Doumanian/Ebersol era, which is why they're not shown on TV anymore, but he authorizes them to have them released on DVD.

 

[DeWilson]

Originally Posted by Jakerman1988

It's really up to Lorne Michaels to have it released. He wasn't too fond of the Doumanian/Ebersol era, which is why they're not shown on TV anymore, but he authorizes them to have them released on DVD.

But does he have Veto power over releases?
 

 

[David Rain]

I'm not sure I believe that Lorne Michaels disliked the Ebersol years. The very idea is rather absurd. The show became very popular again with the addition of Eddie Murphy. Also, the Ebersol years aired VERY heavily in syndie for a long time. No one was keeping them out of circulation. I can understand why Lorne might not think the Doumanian season is worth releasing, even assuming that he has enough control to decide that. But releasing the Murphy/Piscopo years is a no-brainer from a business standpoint. Just with regard to Eddie Murphy, he's rarely been as funny and electric as he was on SNL.

 

I wish they would just make a decision once and for all about what's next, if anything. Frankly, I'm tired of the rampant speculation and people trying to turn their opinions into fact.

 

[GuruAskew]

Last year Season 5 was announced on August 25 for a December 1 release.

 

Considering that it's pretty certain that we aren't getting an SNL season this year.

 

Assuming a standard announcement-to-release timeframe (admittedly, there is none, though these timeframes don't vary too much) that would only lave the last week of December for a release, and Universal would be crazy to release this thing after Christmas. After Season 3 they never released another season outside of the prime Holiday shopping period.

 

I've said it in another similar thread: people have been debating whether they'd release Season 6 vs. skipping to a later season but I think there's a good chance that they only ever planned on releasing the first five. WIth tenures and departures overlapping in later years picking and choosing seasons becomes a bit of a headache but releasing the first five is a no-brainer. Seasons 1-5 are an easily-definable era of the show (not to mention the most iconic one) with a definitive ending.

 

[Jakerman1988]

Lorne Michael's production company Broadway Video was responsible for syndicating the Doumanian/Ebersol episodes on Comedy Central throughout the 1990s. Why Michaels recently decided to pull them off the channels is beyond me.

 

[David Rain]

Perhaps it was the channels airing the reruns that made the decision to pull the overexposed older eps ? They seemed to jump on the bandwagon of showing only eps from more recent seasons. Unfortunately, that got annoying really quickly.

 

[Jakerman1988]

I heard VH1 gained the syndication rights to SNL.

 

[GuruAskew]

E! was a bad choice for the reruns. They were very reluctant to show anything pre-Ferrell. Hell, they were reluctant to show anything pre-Fallon.

 

I don't see VH1 altogether ignoring the show's history (especially considering all their nostalgia-based programming) but at the same time I don't really see them going any further than the Farley/Sandler/Rock "Bad Boys" era. Comedy Central rarely did and in reality I see VH1 landing somewhere between CC and E! in regards to exploring the history of the show and its more obscure seasons.

 

[vnisanian2001]

Not true. Episodes from the pre-Ferrell AND pre-Fallon were shown. Pee-Wee Herman episode ring any bells?

 

[David Rain]

If VH1 is only going to show eps from the last 10 years then I'm not interested. Despite my undying love for Cheri Oteri.

 

[Trevor824]

VH1's airings are of edited hour long versions. I checked the schedule and they are in hour long time slots.

 

Today it was announced that EVERY episode, including the current season after two days, of the series will be available on Netflix's "Watch It Now" service. I don't know if these will be the full episodes.

 

[streeter]

Netflix already has a lot of episodes, but they're mostly cut down - sometimes to just a few sketches.

 

[David Bixenspan]

I'm don't think that it's every episode. Some sites are reporting it that way but the press release says this:

 

* Episodes from every season of NBC’s signature comedy franchise “Saturday Night Live,” including day-after broadcast of the upcoming 2010, 2011 and 2012 seasons plus hundreds of episodes from the first 35 years of “SNL.”

 

Does anyone know why the recent episodes on Netflix are so heavily edited?

 

[Jakerman1988]

I saw a one hour edited version of the Pee Wee Herman episode on E! in early 2005. I was surprised to see it since they rarely showed the '80s episodes.

 

[vnisanian2001]

It was also edited on a VHS release of SNL in the 80's. That episode was from season 11, when Lorene returned to the show. Maybe they should just skip ahead to that season, and release that instead. At least all the skits from that episode would most likely be intact this time around.