Talk:Saturday Night Live

I've just merged the extremely lengthy cast history and trivia into the main History section from the Cast and crew section. I'm not sure how it's been able to sit like how it was before for apparently years, especially with some of the info from each section being duplicate. The cast and crew section is now much more manageable and actually readable.

The History section is still very lengthy and needs more cutting down, but should really be a summary of a dedicated history article for the show. We do have dedicated history articles in five-year increments, but as has been pointed out in the past, this seems like an arbitrary distinction for the articles, and they are not used properly anyway in that broader way, basically only having information segmented by each season that should just be in the dedicated season articles.

I would argue for having a simple History of Saturday Night Live article that actually takes a more broad look at the history and could house a lot of this content that is currently making the article too long. I thought I'd try and gather some opinions here on the arbitrary five-year issue before making a dedicated merge/move/deletion/whatever request. Any opinions on all this are welcomed. StewdioMACK (talk) 11:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Also pinging Wikipedical, who was the original AfD nominator almost ten years ago. StewdioMACK (talk) 11:46, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I am for a History of Saturday Night Live article, but only if the information cannot be fully represented in the main article. We'd also need to decide which information to put so that it's not bloated; it should only be related to the show. A cast list for each season is probably not needed, because the articles for the individual seasons covered them already. Spinixster (trout me!) 01:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding on to this, because I forgot earlier:

• The history section / article should only summarize significant changes for the show (e.g. Michaels leaving) that is not better off in the individual season articles.
• I'm iffy with keeping the individual five-year increments history articles. Many of them are short and are basically copy-pasted from the season articles.
• The history section / article should cover the recent years (post-2000s) more. Sure, maybe not much has happened, but right now it has much more past coverage than recent ones. A balance between the two would be nice

This may be a hard request, though. I'm willing to help if needed. Spinixster (trout me!) 02:11, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the support and offer to help, Spinixster! I've created a draft at Draft:History of Saturday Night Live of what the new history article could look like. At the moment I just pasted the history section from this article and have added a number of images to illustrate some prominent people. I agree with you that it will need more recent coverage. I believe this proposed article should house a detailed and broad look at the show's history over time (that you are welcome to help me improve and polish), while the main article should include a more brief overview of the main points of its history. Similar to how United States summarises a more detailed History of the United States article.

I agree with deleting the cast lists that are redundant; they just need to be in the season articles, as they already are. We also have a graph of how the cast changed over time on the main article anyway, and the new History article should be a more encyclopaedic, broad rundown of how the cast has evolved in each era. My preferred course of action would be:

• keep the season articles,
• create this new unified History article, and
• delete the curent five-year articles and merge their contents into the dedicated season articles (this is completely doable as these articles have not been used as the broader perspective that they should be and are split up by season already).

As I referenced before, the five-year splits appear to have been an arbitrary decision made back in 2004 that nobody has ever revisited or questioned up to this point. Articles like History of the United States show that there's not much value in splitting up the articles like that. If you'd like to help, please feel free to help me in improving the new History draft and making it higher-quality as we try to get more opinions on all this. Thanks again. StewdioMACK (talk) 06:32, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I much agree with this. I'll see what I can do to help develop the draft. Spinixster (trout me!) 07:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

The draft is about ready to go - imperfect, but much much better than the history pages it obsoletes, and a pretty much complete account of the show's history. I think it's time to open it up in the mainspace. I've gone through and merged any relevant info into the dedicated season articles; I'm soon going to make an AfD request for the old pages and explain how the new page makes them obsolete. StewdioMACK (talk) 12:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

AfD discussion is located here: anyone is free to chime in. StewdioMACK (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Just to update on this talk page after a week on some of the changes that have been made: the older history articles have been redirected (per consensus at that AfD discussion) to the new singular History of Saturday Night Live article, which we have worked and continue to work to source properly and bring up to standard (and anyone is welcome to help us and improve the article). The edit history for those old articles is still available at the redirects if needed for whatever reason, but anything noteworthy has already been moved to either the new history article or the appropriate season articles. I have used some content from those old articles and the main SNL article as a basis for some sections, giving attribution in the edit history, and have sourced any claims made about history.

I have also rewritten the very long history section here to be more concise, more comprehensive of the show's entire history, and better sourced. The template for the history pages is now no longer necessary and I've listed it at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion, the discussion which you can find here. Thanks all. StewdioMACK (talk) 16:18, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Tina Fey has not been mentioned before this sentence. So this doesn't make a lot of sense to be at this point in the article. I think some paragraph before this was cut, or the article was rearranged. Mike Richardson (talk) 17:34, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

It's meant to be a summary of the full History article, but I fixed it. Spinixster (trout me!) 03:04, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Textbook WP:BLP1E, no sourcing found after the fact. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:41, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

  Y Merge completed Klbrain (talk) 11:36, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I note the partial reversal of the merge with this edit; justification in the edit summary. I'm happy to consider this as a case of WP:BRD, given that the merge was executed fairly quickly (I did think, and still think, that the case was obvious ...) Klbrain (talk) 09:15, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

There is a full length article on the subject in 2025 from CNN . There is clearly SIGCOV, if we follow BIO1E, there should be at minimum a section regarding the episode on the SNL page. I think per WP:NOTBLP1E, the article should stand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Katzrockso (talk • contribs) 16:10, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

The New Show should be mentioned in the 1980s history section. — jonas (talk) 00:06, 11 February 2026 (UTC)