Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

This is probably as good a time as any to say a few words about an appealing new comedy program called Saturday Night, which is broadcast at 1130 each Saturday night by NBC, and is definitely not to be confused with Saturday Night Live with Howard

Kosell, which comes on earlier in the evening on ABC. In 1975, the New Yorker reviewed a new

television show that aimed pretty deliberately to redefine comedy, and it came to be called

Saturday Night Live. Starring the number of prime time players, Dan Aykroy, John Belho.

The cast was a bunch of unknowns.

Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, John Belushi,

but it became such an institution.

You can barely think of a comedian in the last half century

who didn't go through SNL as a writer or as a

performer. Here's Tina Faye, reading from the review by Michael Arlen, the New Yorker's television

critic at the time, published just after the show's debut. The CoSell Show and NBC's Saturday

night are both mainly live, but there is a crucial difference between the two programs.

CoSell's show depends on that strange fantasy language of celebrity public relations, which has been

concocted by mass entertainment producers and stars. It is the language of kisses blown, of God bless you,

of this wonderful human being, of a sensational performer

in my very dear personal friend, and of, you're just a beautiful audience. In short, the language

of celebrity hype, perhaps a contemporary equivalent of dandyism and powdered wigs.

Much of the appeal of Saturday night lies in its contrast with this ubiquitous show business language.

Its format, like that of most comedy programs,

...