question...if SCTV was such a classic in satirical comedy...when NBC polled viewers to decide which show they preferred; SNC or SCTV; why did so many viewers opt for SNL...I seem to remember there was a referendum, and (according to NBC anyway) SNL won out....? Evidently, NBC no longer felt it feasible to carry both shows...
shareSNL had a wider appeal as it parodied things found in pop culture. It was grittier and certainly more "adult." Even as a kid, it was cool to watch SNL even though it's something your parents were doing.
SCTV had more intellectual humor. The parodies were of television itself, and literature, like The Grapes of Wrath, or Dante's Inferno, etc. The humor was quite good, but to get into SCTV required above average intelligence, and/or an appreciation for that kind of humor. If you'd never read (or seen the movie) Grapes of Wrath, why would you find that funny? Especially when SNL was doing a parodies of things like Jaws, which was a blockbuster seen by everyone.
The actors on both shows (at the time) were all graduates of the Second City School of Comedy, and the only "crossovers" came in the form of films like Ghostbusters which included members of both casts. Later, Martin Short would be the one to have a character on both. Just a side note, the animated film Heavy Metal was voiced by much of the SCTV cast.
I was always a fan of both, and I wouldn't say SCTV was rejected by viewers, it just appealed to a smaller segment of the TV market of its time.
- Frank
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Hey i have an idea, maybe they rejected the show because it's good! It's the funniest show of all time and no one saw it because it aired at 1 AM. I mean, According to Jim is in it's Fourth Season and that garbage makes Emrill's sitcom look like masterpiece theater! That's just my opinion.
shareI also thing that SCTV is the funniest show of all time .. and yes as the person above said .. you really needed a finer mind to grasp how funny SCTV was.
SNL appealed to the lowest common denominator eventually.
It was cool in the 1st season - mostly for the 'lets push the TV envelope" shock value - but eventually became nothing more than a series of little sketches :
'what if a guy and a girl were having dinner at a restaurant - and the waiter was rude !!!'
Wow, thats some kind of fun !
SCTV was brilliant and ahead of it's time ... look at the structure - it worked on 2 levels : the station itself - with the regular characters we saw grow and develop until we knew them like family ... and the next level : the TV shows playing at the station ...
They had an ongoing resource to mine for comedy .. it was always a mirror of what was going on in real TV at the time ..
The possibilities were endless ... do they rip a current TV show, current commercials, current movies, or old classic films, shows, etc ...
but yeah .. it was too smart - too clever for most people ...
look at TV today .. 'reality shows' stale sitcoms that think they are edgy because they have the sexual innuendo .. oooh boy .. shocking.
most people dont want or understand quality... and they dont deserve it.
Thank god SCTV was there for the rest of us.
...the average TV viewer was less sophisticated about comedy, and, lets face it, probably stupider than today's audience.
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I don't think there was a referendum between SCTV and SNL. The story is the head at NBC(brandon tarta-something) wanted to move the show to Sunday nites at like 7pm(they'd be up against 60 Minutes and other prime time family shows). But to have it par-up with the other family shows Tarta-something wanted to make SCTV more family oriented and it would be the characters neices and nephews(i.e. the nephew of Bobby Bitman). And the cast did'nt want to do that(especially Eugene Levy who Tarta-something hated the most). So Tarta-something deciced to cancel the show and the fans responsed back and picketed infront of the NBC building.
So to answer ya question viewers did'nt really reject the show at all.
IMDB's most overlooked poster,giving you true posts since 2001R.I.P. J Dilla
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Naw they allways had its soul and edge its 7-8 years it was on the air, except in season 5 they lost it a little bit. But made up for it in their 6th and final season.
IMDB's most overlooked poster,giving you true posts since 2001R.I.P. J Dilla
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The man in question, BTW was named Brandon Tartikoff.
shareNBC didn't cancel SCTV because of it's popularity. The show was just much too expensive to produce. And the network wanted shows that would be more commercial.
SNL was willing to strip mine it's comedy and share the profits with the network. SCTV wasn't.
When they were offered a prime time slot on Sunday nights they refused to change their humor and that's what signed their cancellation.
Although I believe once John Candy announced he was leaving anyway NBC lost it's interest in the show.
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Honestly, at that time, I think most people were unaware of SCTV's existence.
The show started on a few syndicated channels (for me it was WOR, channel 9 in NY) and usually, syndicated channels in the 1970's were just airing old movies or 1950's sitcoms.
Later, when the show moved to NBC, that was good- however, the timeslot was bad (12:30) on a Friday night.
The show also received very, very little promotion, due to budgetary constraints (the syndicated years) or perhaps to avoid annoying Lorne Michaels or Johnny Carson, both of whom pretty much had a stranglehold over what shows would or would not be allowed to be part of NBC's late night programming and how much network support those shows would be allowed.
That's my theory anyway.
nothing really good is loved by the masses, it rarely is (ok...the beatles are the exception)
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