Saturday Night Live is an American sketch comedy series created by Lorne Michaels, who has produced the show for most of its run. The show has aired on NBC since 1975. After the 1984–85 season, producer Dick Ebersol pitched a retool of the show that emphasized taped material over live material; NBC declined and Ebersol left, reinstating Michaels. Michaels hired a new and younger cast, but the 1985–86 season eventually received unfavorable reviews. Michaels fired most of the cast before the 1986–87 season, hiring a new cast that included members Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz. This cast would remain relatively stable until the 1990–91 season. History Dick Ebersol left SNL because NBC refused his request to shut the program down entirely for six months in order to shift much of the material from a live broadcast onto tape. NBC briefly considered canceling the show, but programming head Brandon Tartikoff (a fan of SNL) decided to keep it, re-hiring former producer Lorne Michaels. 1985-1986 cast Michaels wanted a younger cast for the show. He hired Academy Award nominee Randy Quaid, best known for his work in The Last Detail and National Lampoon's Vacation, as well as Robert Downey, Jr. and Joan Cusack. Michaels later said about the 1985-1986 cast that "perhaps I went too young". As Al Franken stated, "You couldn't do a Senate hearing [sketch] with Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., [or] Terry Sweeney. I mean, those guys aren't senators." Ratings were weak, and some cast members did not expect the show to be renewed. NBC briefly did cancel the show at the end of the 1985–1986 season, but Michaels asked for another season. He ended the season's last show with a sketch in which the cast (playing themselves) get caught in a fire, and Michaels chooses to rescue only Lovitz. As the others try to escape the smoke and flames, the show asks, "WHO WILL SURVIVE?" and "WHO WILL PERISH?" before advising viewers to "TUNE IN OCTOBER 11th," a question mark appearing near each name in the closing credits. While the sketch satirized common cliffhanger season endings in 1980s TV shows such as Dallas, it also permitted Michaels to make changes to the cast. Show writer Robert Smigel later said, "Some of the cast members were kind of mad [about] that sketch. The ones who weren't Jon Lovitz." Return to form When the 1986-1987 season began, only Lovitz,