The multimillion dollar Saturday Night Live UK gamble

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong and here with me today is British journalist Tala Vistrom. Hey Waylon, great to be here. Great to have you. Now if you've been anywhere near a TV set in the past 50 years, you've certainly heard this familiar catchphrase. catchphrase.

0:33What you've never heard is this. Live from London, it's Saturday night. Wow. Yes. Plot twist. That is until this past weekend when America's iconic late night sketch show, Saturday Night Live, made its British debut. And like British humor itself, I couldn't help but be cynical about the prospect. I mean, how do you copy an institution as American as apple pie and measure up to a behemoth that's racked up 93 Emmys? The answer to that is more cowbell. Today on the show, the multi-million dollar gamble that is SNL UK.

1:23Get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash NPR. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash NPR. Rules and restrictions may apply. Saturday Night Live may not be the cutting-edge offering it was half a century ago. Many once-faithful viewers have tuned out, at least on the television. Episodes today average 4 to 5 million viewers. That's down from 13 million in the late 70s.

2:06So why a British version now? Well, in an era of mergers and acquisitions, one buyout has paved the way for this project. In 2018, American media giant Comcast purchased the UK media network Sky, which is airing the show. Comcast also owns Universal, which is producing the UK show, and NBC, which airs SNL in the States. So it's easy to be skeptical. Is this nothing more than just global corporate expansion? Yeah, and you know, there's a fair share of challenges too. First, it's a very American style of comedy. I spend a lot of my time thinking about what's a fundamentally English sense of humor or British sense of humor versus a very American sense of humor.

2:49Erica Horton studied British television and comedy for her PhD. British kind of has the satire, the prestige, the theatrical understanding. A lot of very well-educated people coming out of Cambridge and Oxford becoming our big TV stars, whereas the American model is kind of glamorous and sexy. And it's saying, look at me, whereas British comedy is much more like, oh, God, are you looking at me? I'm so sorry. That explains why many comedies have struggled to stick the transatlantic landing. Yes, Benny Hill might have struck gold once upon a time. But for every Benny Hill, there are failed copies, like a remake of Fawlty Towers called Amanda's.

3:24I have no memory of this. Never even heard of it. But there are more signs of crossover potential today in a global media landscape. Take the BBC series Have I Got News For You, like a quiz show but with celebrities and banter. It's been going strong for 36 years, and an American version just launched in 2024 on CNN. It's hosted by Daily Show alum Roy Wood Jr. The administration says that there's only one person that's in charge of calling the shots on this war. Who is that person? Netanyahu. The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. Against the odds, it's doing pretty well. It's now on its fourth season.

4:04It's not really to my taste because it feels different to the original. Maybe I'm just falling into the classic trap of judging American comedy to be a bit more, I don't know, cringey? How dare you? We love our cringe around here. And I think the idea that Saturday Night Live is cringe is kind of, absolutely, yeah, sometimes jokes go wrong, but that's part of the excitement of the live setting. And out of that, you do get the Blue Oyster Cult sketch with Will Ferrell and the cowbell. Dickinson wants more cowbell. We should probably give him more cowbell. Hey, baby, I gotta have more cowbell. And you get Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and all of these things that get chopped and played and played and played.

4:41Hey, get out of my way. Stop trying to impose on my right to shoot wolves from a helicopter. The key is maybe don't compare two versions of the same show. They are their own entities, like The Office, which became two very different but massive hits on both sides of the pond. SNL UK has taken that theory on board. The cast of players is largely from local comedy circles. That's reminiscent of the unknown names who appeared on SNL before becoming global stars, from Murray and Murphy to Sandler and Farrell. At its core, it's just a sketch show, a very British tradition from the days of Monty Python.

5:21Sure, Celebrity Jeopardy, Wayne's World, and Church Lady might not translate, but it'll develop its own skits that fit the market. But there's a lot of pressure to make it work. SNL creator Lorne Michaels and his crew of SNL veterans are heavily involved in getting the formula right. He and Seth Meyers reportedly sat in on table reads in London. Tina Fey hosted the first episode. But even if they get the formula right, there's another challenge. It's super expensive. The online entertainment news website Vulture reported that a single episode can cost$4 million. It's fair to say these are budgets far higher than British shows are used to.

6:00A typical panel show like Have I Got News for You costs well below half a million dollars. The major cost is the nature of live TV. Elaborate sets and nakuchama all made for five-minute sketches, then gone forever. Evan Shapiro is a media analyst and a former executive vice president at NBCUniversal. Have you ever been to Saturday Night Live? It's amazing. There's three stages, and then there's all these sets, and just the ballet of the sets in between takes is better than the show itself. It's X number of cameras, X number of stagehands. There's a number of writers it takes to produce what is ostensibly 12 short plays every week.

6:41That's what that show costs. Sky didn't share its episode budget when we asked, but it has a pretty healthy budget compared to the UK's broadcast channels. And Lorne Michaels' company Broadway Video will help with the financing. But even if they are flush with cash, there's another obstacle. How Brits get their entertainment. Evan says many in the UK media industry are addicted to traditional television. You've got these people who just hold their breath until they're blue in the face and wish that the past would return. This is the very moment when the British media industry needs to shift more to digital and forget its hang-ups with traditional telly.

7:18And Sky is leaning into that. The show will be airing on Sky One, the satellite network's premier entertainment channel, and also on its streaming service Now, which has carried marquee American shows like The White Lotus and Succession. So this show basically saying we're going to be internet and television at the same time. Yes, this is a step in the right direction. The model also puts less pressure on advertising pounds because subscriptions guarantee some revenue. Now that people have their streaming subscriptions, the main goal isn't signups. It's customer retention. With that in mind, there's been a real rise in unscripted content, like the trusty sketch show.

7:57Evan has one big qualm, and this is the fourth challenge. Sky has only ordered six episodes. That's not a lot of time to demonstrate it's worth the big bucks. You've told the writing staff, you've told the cast, you've told the showrunners, you have a month and a half. And if it doesn't work, we're going to pull the plug. And that pressure, that ticking time bomb, makes it hard to be funny. That joke's got to sit for a second. Seinfeld was not successful at first. Family Guy got canceled and then came back. But the digital model might already have that covered. These days, social media offers a second round of exposure for sketches, sometimes days or weeks after they air.

8:37That's where SNL might still be a sleeper hit. The low TV figures might be deceiving in the U.S. because SNL is actually the biggest show on YouTube in the U.S. by unique views. I thought Digital First may run the risk of losing older audiences. But Evan actually told me one of the fastest growing audience segments on YouTube is over 55. And of course, Erica says it will also engage the younger viewers. Finding younger people is through TikTok. It is through clipping and social media. and a clip of Timothee Chalamet saying he doesn't care about ballet will go around the world way faster than us old folk watching BBC One Live to watch I Got News for You.

9:15If only the Brits gave it the patience it needs. Maybe they could borrow some optimism from Americans? I think it's unfair for all this pressure to be put on this version of this massive, successful Hollywood-sprinkled meme machine of Saturday Night Live when this is a group of young people getting together, making something, experimenting, doing all the things that comedy television requires. Well, you know, in the spirit of raising the national morale, we could certainly use some optimism and some more love. We could use that on this side of the pond too. Thank you for coming on the show, Talib.

9:49Great to be here again. Thanks, Weylin. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Sina Lafredo. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kicking Cannon is our show's editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR. This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Think or Swim. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Support for NPR and the following message come from Edward Jones. What does it mean to live a rich life?

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