NBC Late night shuffle

[imref]

Why Fallon > Leno:

[tomterp]

Saturday night live was very entertaining last weekend. 

Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd did an encore performance of "two wild and crazy guys", as dating game show tandem competitors.  Was quite the pleasant surprise.   

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Ackroyd > Ferrel

[Terpfan76]

Ackroyd > Ferrel

I like ackroyd but will Ferrell and Chris farley were my favorites. Farley as Ted Kennedy was hilarious.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Ackroyd is a better writer, can do a strait man better, and can play more than one character in his movies.  Heck, he was good in driving miss daisy without even doing comedy.  Ferrell is bigger, but not as much range.

Maybe Ackroyd is Roger Craig, and Ferrell is Larry Johnson.

[imref]

Seth Myers is getting Fallon's spot once Fallon replaces Leno.

[imref]

Ackroyd > Ferrel

Aykroyd never made Anchorman, therefore your hypothesis is false.

[comish4lif]

Aykroyd never made Anchorman, therefore your hypothesis is false.

but Will Ferrell was never a Blues Brother.

[Terpfan76]

but Will Ferrell was never a Blues Brother.

John Goodman however was. Anchorman is one of my all time favorite movies.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Ghostbusters.

There was a pretty good  movie, Neighbors, where Ackroyd played the crazy guy and Belushi was the normal suburban neighbor that was pretty funny too.  Trading Places, etc...  Like I said, just more overall talent.  Ferrett had maybe better peak performances.  Saying Ferrell is better than Aykroyd because of Anchorman is only a bit worse than saying Levale Speigner is better than Johan Santana. 

As far as SNL goes, "more cowbell" was a one off. "Jane you ignorant slut,"  Irwin Mainway "Bag o' glass," the original coneheads (not the movie), and his Bob Dole ("If you're such miracle worker, cure my crippled hand" to Pat Robertson in a debate) just was much more prime material.

[Terpfan76]

Will Ferrell on Man Vs Wild was epic though...

[Coladar]

Meh... Ferrell on SNL just wasn't classic in the way earlier eras were, certainly not compared to Akroyd's time.

I remember well all the nagging about how SNL 'lost' its way and was no longer funny from 10-15 years back. That talk started, or at least amped up, right in the prime of Ferrell's era, and it hasn't stopped since. The years with Mike Murphy, Dana Carvy, Norm MacDonald, there were some great sketches and great actors. Then came a dropoff in quality, starting right around when Ferrell joined the cast. I don't think one can cast blame on Ferrell's talent while he was on SNL - for example, his Trebek was always comedic gold. But it seems delusional to consider the years he was on the show as being 'good' SNL or even watchable.

Look at everybody else he came up with - Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Rachel Dracht, Ana Gasteyer, Tim Meadows, Chris Kattan... All those names have become almost jokes themselves given their desperation and failures post SNL. How many failed sitcoms or films have they been a part of? When Tracy Morgan is the sole other standout of your cast, your cast sucked. Tina Fey came in later in Ferrell's run, but the bulk of Ferrel's years saw one of the weakest casts and efforts in SNL history. Again, I'm not casting judgment on Ferrell himself, and his performances on SNL, one way or the other, but his seasons on SNL were extraordinarily weak. I wouldn't be surprised if Chris Kattan were homeless begging for money by now, the millennial years of SNL had some of the most untalented, one-trick pony actors in nearly 40 years of SNL.

[Coladar]

Rather than ninja editing this in... I was looking up casts on Wikipedia and saw this:

In July 1999, when executive producer Lorne Michaels held auditions for the season, NBC introduced a new contract for first-year cast members, replacing the five- or six-year deals they had used in the past.[1] The terms were established by NBC executives Scott Sassa and Garth Ancier. According to Peter Bogdanovich, the new contract came with the following terms:[1]

NBC can take a Saturday Night Live cast member off the show any time after his or her second year on the program and put him or her in an NBC sitcom.

A cast member has the option of saying no to the first two shows proposed by NBC, but must accept the third deal.
NBC dictates the length of the sitcom contract, which can run as long as six years.

SNL Films, co-owned by Paramount Pictures, NBC and Lorne Michaels, has a three-movie option that would pay the star a set $75,000 for the first film, $150,000 for the second and $300,000 for the third, rates that used to be negotiable.

NBC has the option of paying those same amount to force a cast member to say no to a film deal offered to them by another studio.

Perhaps that explains why these years sucked so much cast-wise, and it furthers my earlier thoughts about what a retarded company NBC is and has been for quite some time. NBC started going downhill around this time, as did SNL. Contracts like that, no wonder. 'Can reject the first two, but must take the third sitcom offered' no matter how godawful it is, be forced to do it for six years, and thus joining SNL then meant possibly 8 years tied up in contracts just to join the cast? Any rising star, a young comedian with their sights set on film, would be nuts to have signed that deal.

Used to be SNL would have been where guys like Daniel Tosh or even a pre-nutso Dave Chepelle would have come up. Deals like this, it makes sense why SNL has instead become where the Horatio Sanz and the Goodburger kid's of the world stick around until they're in a walker/kicked off versus where the hottest young comedic talent make names for themselves.

[mitlen]

Look at everybody else he came up with - Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Rachel Dracht, Ana Gasteyer, Tim Meadows, Chris Kattan... All those names have become almost jokes themselves

Lots of crossword puzzle answers at least  ...   

[imref]

Lots of crossword puzzle answers at least  ...   

in that same time frame we got mike myers, will ferrell, tina fey, amy poehler,  fallon, morgan, and so on, so there have been a few good ones to come out of the program over the last 10 years.    And of course, there was Norm.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

the nadir was the cast after the first cast and before Billy Crystal.  Tim Kazurinski et al, including I think a lousy julia Louis-dreyfus.  The only redeeming aspect was a young eddie murphy and some joe piscopo.

a problem with the late 80s, early 90s casts is they were trying to manufacture break out characters.  Some worked, but some were painful.

[Coladar]

in that same time frame we got mike myers, will ferrell, tina fey, amy poehler,  fallon, morgan, and so on, so there have been a few good ones to come out of the program over the last 10 years.    And of course, there was Norm.

Fey and Poehler were both late in Ferrell's run though. Recent years, the cast and talent has definitely been improving. But around and before 2000, the names I mentioned prime examples, there was a serious lack of talent - the primary years of Ferrell on SNL.

[Terpfan76]

Fey and Poehler were both late in Ferrell's run though. Recent years, the cast and talent has definitely been improving. But around and before 2000, the names I mentioned prime examples, there was a serious lack of talent - the primary years of Ferrell on SNL.

whatever, Ferrell was still hilarious. His Harry Carey was one of my favorites.

[Coladar]

Watching some stuff this week, been intending on posting this. Obviously I despise NBC at this point, much deserved though it is.

They're in horrible, horrible shape right now. I don't think any broadcast network has ever been so close to the brink. ABC at the turn of the millennium? While Who Wants to be a Millionaire undoubtedly resurrected them, that was a primetime collapse. It didn't spread to every aspect of the network, nowhere near like the crap we're seeing with the Today Show and Lauer, Tonight and Leno, etc. Primetime is constantly changing, but NBC is faltering with institutions that date back to the early days of television and have remained dominant all those years. Apples and oranges to ABC's struggles.

The Voice... My god. Millionaire had nothing on NBC's treatment of the Voice. Look at their damn schedule: Five nights a week. Saturday, hour repeat. Sunday, two hour repeat. Monday, two hours. Tuesday, two hours. Wednesday, an hour. Eight damn hours out of 16 hours programming. A decade after Idol proved singing shows as a concept, a decade after Millionaire showed what happens when you go nuts. Millionaire was an hour a night, five nights a week. Voice? Two hours most nights. In the year that even Idol is beginning to falter. The Voice is a dead man walking at this point.

Elsewhere during primetime? Two hours Celebrity Apprentice. Three hours Fridays of crap and trash, news shows long since DOA. The Office dies next week. 30 Rock already dead. It extends beyond NBC - I was watching cable, FX, and a promo for Telemundo, an NBC property, advertising La Voz Kids. Yes, NBC looked at the Voice and said what more can we squeeze out? The Voice Kids? OMG, money! Oh, in spanish and only for Latino talent? Genius! Good lord, make a Spanish version of the Voice. Ripoff the Voice on NBC for Summer with kids. But the ideal option is Spanish Kids Voice?

Lastly, am I the only one their promos drive nuts? Hannibal, "Watch It Live, Thursdays at 10." Grimm,  "Watch it live, Tuesdays at..." Can't have people DVRing and skipping ads, can we? Solution: Tell them to watch it live. Why? No reason. At all. No incentive. No, "Watch live for codes to unlock exclusive online content of additional scenes that get removed at 11pm." Just "Watch It Live." Because of course we aren't going to DVR shows when a gruff announcer orders, not asks, orders us to watch it live. Such utter incompetency that you've got to wonder if they aren't intentionally trying to tank their entire networks at this point.

[Tyler Durden]

SNL - Chris Farley and David Spade were also on SNL around that time, weren't they?  Tommy Boy is a classic.