Pretty sure that was the one! Going through that thread the comments about Labine really overshadow anything Bill Bell had to say lol! And he dropped some interesting stuff in that interview about how he does what he wants, and by virtue of staying number 1 CBS/Sony doesn’t interfere. They did with Kay Alden though.
The quality of Saturday Night Live has always had its ups and downs, and yet I know the second Lorne Michaels leaves that show will essentially cease to exist. There are so many expensive, intricate parts of producing each sketch that he has always protected and nurtured, and he has a level of power that just doesn’t exist. He also knows how to engage in network politics to protect the overall show. When they hit 50 last year, a lot of the online commentary was he will finally step aside and somebody like Tina Fey will take over, or Seth. I would sometimes comment that even if it stayed successful the second he was gone the network will mess with it in ways they never did before. Y&R never dropped out of number 1, held on by a significant margin under Kay Alden, and she was not given any of the grace they gave Bell. And there were about two to three full years before they started publicly counting down to his announced retirement where the show was pretty bad. And network tv wasn’t dead yet, so it took them like 6 years to pretty much dismantle the show, and it’s never recovered.
That was fascinating to revisit. So many people that still post, including myself, had similar ideas then and takes that have stayed the same. Also interesting to see names I haven’t seen in a long time. Makes you wonder what happened to some of those posters. I believe at least one of them was banned!
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titan1978 ·
