Announcers Often, the show's announcer is also a major part of the show. Famous announcers include Gene Rayburn and Hugh Downs (both from the early years of The Tonight Show); Ed McMahon from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; Edd Hall and John Melendez from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; Bill Wendell and Alan Kalter from Late Show with David Letterman; Dicky Barrett from Jimmy Kimmel Live!; Steve Higgins from the Jimmy Fallon eras of Late Night and The Tonight Show; Andy Richter from The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and Conan; and Don Pardo from Saturday Night Live. These announcers often have significant career accomplishments outside of their particular shows. Before Jen Spyra on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, there were no female late night announcers. Other formats Network variety and entertainment programming Other late night programs on broadcast and cable television break the standard format. In October 1975, after the network decided to discontinue its Saturday reruns of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson per Carson's request to instead air reruns periodically during the week to decrease his production workload, NBC replaced the weekend Tonight reruns with a new comedy-variety series, NBC's Saturday Night (permanently retitled Saturday Night Live beginning with its third season); the 90-minute program, which continues to air and has remained a staple of NBC's Saturday lineup even after the network (and its broadcast competitors) ceased producing original scripted prime time programming on that night in the mid-2000s, primarily features sketches performed by a repertory cast of comedians (referred to in its early seasons as the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players") and a celebrity guest host (who also performs a monologue following the opening sketch and title sequence) as well as live performances from a featured musical act. The program inspired other sketch comedy-foused variety series, including a handful that aired in late night, such as Fridays (developed in 1980 as ABC's answer to SNL with a nearly identical format) and MADtv (which served as a partial direct competitor to SNL throughout its initial 1995–2010 run and was Fox's longest-running late night program to date). During the 1970s and 1980s, CBS filled its late-night period with dramatic programming, primarily under the CBS Late Movie banner. Although the time slot did, indeed, feature movies, it also featured a mixture of previously broadcast dramas dating back to the 1960s (i.e. The Avengers, The Prisoner,