Dwell from New York… it’s Sunday evening?
Saturday Night time Dwell is celebrating the large 5-0 in 2025, and NBC is marking the event with a weekend-long celebration culminating in a three-hour particular that’s airing on February 16 from 8-11 p.m. ET. Flip forward within the calendar, and also you’ll see that’s a Sunday, not a Saturday.
However don’t fear: Lorne Michaels’ late-night establishment isn’t getting a Fiftieth-anniversary rebrand. Contemplate this a repeat of a programming technique that labored so effectively the final time SNL celebrated a significant anniversary—the Saturday Night time Dwell 40th Anniversary Particular, which aired on February 15, 2015.
“We simply determined that 10 years later, we’ll do the 50th anniversary on that very same Sunday,” Jeff Bader, NBCUniversal Leisure’s president of program planning technique, tells ADWEEK throughout a dialog previewing the community’s 2024-25 fall and midseason schedule. “It additionally affords us the chance to have 4 hours of primetime versus the three hours we’d have on a Saturday. It’s nonetheless Saturday Night time Dwell it doesn’t matter what.”
Even when the particular airs on a Sunday, anticipate it to be a rankings monster crammed with cameos from 5 a long time’ value of Not Prepared for Primetime Gamers. There’s additionally an expectation that we might lastly hear who can be taking on for Michaels ought to he resolve to exit Studio 8H after the present’s 50th season. However Bader tamps down on any succession hypothesis forward of the particular. “It’s simply the celebration of the 50 years of SNL on NBC and there’s nothing to say about Lorne or any of these plans.”
However earlier than February—and TV upfront week—comes NBC’s fall lineup, which options three new collection alongside returning hits like Night time Courtroom and Dick Wolf’s numerous installments within the Chicago and Regulation & Order franchises. In line with Steve Kern, NBC Leisure’s senior vp of program planning and scheduling, “stability” is the narrative of the 2024-2025 season.
“Now we have returning reveals on each evening of the week, together with soccer on Saturday and Sunday,” Kern notes. “And we’re utilizing our secure schedule to launch new reveals, whereas additionally fortifying reveals coming again for his or her second seasons. That’s the way it’s been for a few years for NBC: We attempt to use our hit reveals to launch new reveals.”
Not for nothing, however the upcoming trio of latest fall reveals characteristic on-camera and behind-the-scenes expertise who’ve a profitable historical past with the community, beginning with the Zachary Quinto-led medical drama, Sensible Minds. Quinto scored his breakout position practically 20 years in the past because the brain-eating villain Sylar on NBC’s comedian book-inspired collection, Heroes. He’s nonetheless fascinated by grey matter on Sensible Minds, which casts him as Oliver Wolf, a devoted neurosurgeon modeled after real-life doctor, Oliver Sacks.
