Saturday Night Live
It's from 1975, before you were born.
- Network
- NBC
- Genre
- Sketch comedy
- Creator
- Lorne Michaels
- Premiered
- 1975
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About
As of 2026, it's 51 years old.
Saturday Night Live has been broadcasting live, slightly chaotic comedy every weekend since 1975, surviving roughly a dozen 'this is the cast that finally ruined it' eras to become the launchpad for nearly every major American comedian of the last half-century. Half the time it's appointment television; the other half it's appointment complaining-about-television.
From the Coneheads to 'more cowbell,' its sketches and political impressions have shaped the national conversation, even on the weeks everyone agrees it wasn't its best.
Live, uneven, and utterly institutional, SNL is the show America has been declaring 'not as good as it used to be' for fifty straight years while never turning it off.
Saturday Night Live season by season
Saturday Night Live has run for 51 seasons (1975–2025) across 1009 episodes. You're older than the seasons in green.
