There are few more staples on American television than Saturday Night Live. For over 40 years it has been entertaining viewers across the country and has become a breeding ground for some of America’s most famous comedic talent.
The show was created by Lorne Michels, who was also the show’s first head writer alongside Michael O’Donoghue.
Saturday Night Live – or SNL as it has been abbreviated to over the years - immediately struck chord with viewers as it lampooned politicians and well-known public figures in a series of monologues, stand-up routines.
The show first aired on October 11, 1975 and its first cast included now-familiar names like Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, who would go to start in the Blues Brothers movie a few years later, Chevy Chase, who would appear in a number of comedy movies, and Jane Curtin, who found fame with Kate and Allie and later Third Rock from The Sun.

During its 43-year run, the show has been filmed at the NBC studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. It has so far aired 858 episodes and is currently in its 44th season.
Ratings for Saturday Night Live were not available until the late 1980s, although the show was already hugely popular by then. Viewing figures reached their peak between 1991 and 1993 when an average of over 12 million people tuned in each week. They dipped somewhat after that as competing shows and platforms ate into their ratings and their figures dipped to below 7 million for the first time in 2008.
However, given the prevalence of the internet and sites such as YouTube, SNL has rallied in recent years and still enjoys relatively healthy ratings of over 8 million.
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