The live show called Saturday Night (later known as Saturday Night Live) premiered on October 11th, 1975. A few days before that, Lorne Michaels took all seven Not Ready for Primetime Players to the Tomarrow with Tom Snyder to introduce them. For the vantage point of 38 years later, it's hard to imagine that no one had ever heard of these seven people.
Snyder: "What should we look for in your show?"
Michaels: "Anxiety."
Ah, memories. Even when I didn't make it home by 11:30 on a Saturday night, I managed to watch the show wherever I was at the time. But that one time we kept Neilsen diaries, I made sure to watch at home and log it. Open Culture tells us about the beginning of the show, complete with audition on video and a classic sketch by Gilda Radner. -via mental_floss
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I was a kid watching SNL during the 70s, and since those days, it's not nearly as hip and genuinely edgy as it was then. The original cast was absolutely NOT afraid to poke fun at anything or anyone.
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I remember watching (part of) the first show at the college radio station where I'd gotten my first shift at midnight on Saturday. The student on before me had brought a portable TV in so he could watch it during the last half hour of his shift (while he did a lot of record segues). So I saw the first half hour and bits of the rest (he hung around the studio) and amazingly did it without long stretches of dead air (though my on-air banter was awful... they just thought I was being a beginner... I WAS put on midnight on Saturday)
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