NBC bringing Saturday Night Live to new web site
NBC can’t seem to make up its mind whether to embrace the scary world of internet based television or shun it. First the company uploaded the ‘Tina Fey as Sarah Palin’ skits itself to garner some viral video buzz, then it yanked another skit lampooning George Soros and the Sandlers under what is believed by some to be the threat of legal action. Now NBC is talking about having its own site dedicated to playing Saturday Night Live videos, as well as some original content from the SNL writing team.
I think that it’s a smart move for NBC to embrace the web as a place where the viewers get much of their content now. However, if NBC buckled under pressure to remove a video that made someone powerful angry, does that mean the content on the site the company hosts will be limited as well? I’d be interested in a site devoted to SNL if I could see all of them, uncensored and unsegmented by the SNL legal department. Otherwise, it would just be a waste of my time.
Comedy Central puts The Daily Show and The Colbert Report up for viewing on their site, and NBC could do the same on NBC.com, but seems to want to use the leverage of the SNL brand to generate a separate place to drive traffic back to NBC. At the moment SNL is gaining back some momentum as a strong brand, thanks to Tina Fey’s brief return as Sarah Palin, but will it last?
Saturday Night Live has always been a show that seems to ebb and flow in comedic genius. In the early years the team was brilliant and each episode was spot on, but there always seem to be periods where the show loses viewers for a while. Something always seems to bring us back though, and in this case it has been Tina Fey resurrecting the limping show. If NBC wants to make the idea of an SNL based video site viable they will have to feature the early years as well as current episodes. The company will also have to make the videos available for embedding and sharing somehow – it’s hard to have a viral video success if the video is anchored to a branded, heavily controlled corporate site.
Beyond the mechanics of creating a video site for the SNL brand that would make viewers happy and give them enough freedom to share clips and create viral successes is concern about censorship. Saturday Night Live makes fun of public figures. That’s what makes it funny. Pulling the Soros/Sandlers sketch does not bode well as an example of how NBC would handle future problems. The internet as a home for television is still in its infancy, and each decision made now will have lasting implications for the future of how we watch television online, and what is available to us. I’d rather fight the hard battles now while the concept is new and end up with more variety, otherwise I think we’ll be looking at a legal mess the size of the messed up music industry in a few years.
Speaking of the music industry, don’t forget the RIAA has already done its part to make sure we won’t get to see some treasured SNL moments. If the skit involved popular music, chances are the cost of clearing the music to air would be too great even for a company the size of NBC to bear. That should tell us all something about what we’ve allowed the RIAA to become as far a hindrance to the music industry, that its rights issues can bleed into television and DVD footage also.
Would you watch Saturday Night Live on an SNL branded channel? Some of the content NBC is talking about including sounds interesting, like live dress rehearsal footage, never seen before clips and staff-generated content like The Line. There would also be background information and bios on cast members including lists of their favorite episodes and other tidbits. I must admit, I’m intrigued to see where NBC goes with the idea.
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