Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell
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Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell was a program that ran on ABC from September 1975 to January 1976, hosted by Howard Cosell.
A program called NBC's Saturday Night debuted the same year. Once Cosell's show was cancelled, the NBC show renamed itself Saturday Night Live.[1]
The Cosell show featured Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest as regular comedy performers, dubbed "The Prime Time Players." In response, the NBC show called its regular performers "the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players". Ironically, all three of the original Prime Time Players eventually joined the NBC show. [2]
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were fans of Cosell, and wanted to appear on Saturday Night Live. They never made the premiere episode, on which Lennon and Ono hoped The Beatles would reunite. Instead, Cosell played host to the Bay City Rollers, whom he dubbed "the next" British phenomenon.
[edit] Guests
- 20 September 1975: Billy Crystal, Frank Sinatra, Bay City Rollers
- 11 October 1975: Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, The Rockettes
- 8 November 1975: Roy Clark, Billy Crystal, Ted Kennedy, Chita Rivera as Herself/Velma Kelly, and Gwen Verdon as Herself/Roxie Hart