Saturday Night Live is an American sketch comedy series created and produced by Lorne Michaels for most of the show's run. The show has aired on NBC since 1975. Saturday Night Live was not an immediate hit, but the show soon developed its own identity with help from the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players". After an unstable first season, more and more sketch comedy got on the air, and SNL became something of a New York institution. The first four seasons of the show were a hit both commercially and critically, catapulting the original cast into stardom. For the 1979–80 season, cast members Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi left the show. This season is considered underwhelming by most standards. After this season, Michaels attempted to take a break and appoint featured player/writer Al Franken his successor, only to be replaced behind his back with associate producer Jean Doumanian for the 1980–81 season. Background Conception and development In 1974, NBC Tonight Show host Johnny Carson requested that weekend "Best of Carson" reruns of his show (known as The Weekend Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) come to an end. This way, Carson could take two weeknights off and feed affiliates the specials on those nights. As Carson's show was extremely popular, NBC heard his request as an ultimatum, fearing he might use the issue to move to another network. To fill the gap, NBC brought in Dick Ebersol to develop a late-night variety show for airing on Saturday nights. Ebersol's first order of business was to hire a young Canadian producer named Lorne Michaels as the showrunner. As New York City television production was in decline in the mid-1970s, NBC decided to base the new show at their studios in 30 Rockefeller Center. Michaels was given Studio 8H, a converted radio studio that was most famous for having hosted Arturo Toscanini and his orchestra in the 1950s. The studio had fallen into disuse, and was largely being used for election coverage by the mid-1970s. Original team The first cast members hired were Second City alumni Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, National Lampoon "Lemmings" alumnus Chevy Chase (whose trademark became his usual falls and opening spiel that cued the show's opening), Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris and George Coe. The original head writer was Michael O'Donoghue, a writer at National Lampoon. The original theme music was written by future Academy