Talk:History of Saturday Night Live (2000–2005)

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[edit] Ashlee Simpson

The Ashlee Simpson episode is the first time SNL became the subject of news stories since Gore appeared, so it merits full treatment. It also goes to addressing the live claim of the show's title. -Willmcw 00:37, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

-Is there some reason why the deleted info should not be included? Was it facutally incorrect? -Willmcw 02:33, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I added a bit more to it. Hopefully that's satisfactory. Everyking 02:46, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Great. I added some more too. The person who really comes out badly in all of this is Lorne Michaels, who probably lied on camera to 60 Minutes immediately after the incident.
  • In an interview after the broadcast, Michaels claims no one ever asked him if they could use lip-syncing for Simpson's performance. "If the plan had been, ya know like, they’d done the Thursday rehearsal and had lip-synched and said, 'Well, that’s what we do,' then we would have said, 'No, we can’t do that'," he says. He explains it goes against the show's essence of being live. The only time he's been aware of lip-syncing taking place, he says, "is during dance breaks where if it was all about dance, and that’s a relatively recent phenomenon."
  • http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/28/60minutes/main652196.shtml
  • Saturday’s incident exposed what many consider an obvious secret: that some singers who appear onstage aren’t singing live at all, or at least have their voices augmented by backing tracks. And it’s happened before on “Saturday Night Live,” too, executive producer Lorne Michaels told the Associated Press.
  • http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6322824/
In any case, it helps remind everyone of that watching live entertainment on television is like watching car racing - the occasional error makes it more exciting to watch. -Willmcw 05:01, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Everyking, I am continually disappointed by your unpartiality with regard to the Ashlee Simpson incident on SNL. You added what I feel are unnecessary details to my paragraph to clarify that Ashlee had "acid reflux". You then reverted my addition of the fact that Ashlee blamed the band for playing the wrong song, citing it was "too complicated to get into". Please clarify why your additions are also not "too complicated". As others have tried to do, I was simply attempting to present what had happened.

I think when you look back at this in one year when you've moved on from being an Ashlee Simpson fan you will realize your bias. For me, I've wasted too much of my life already on this. Jeff schiller 05:27, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

Yeah, you probably have. Well, I think it's more or less OK now, I'll do some more thinking on it, though. Everyking 05:30, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mishap in October 2004

The mishap in October 2004 is the most newsworthy thing that has happened on SNL in years, and deserves as much attention as the comings and going of cast members, etc. Several editors worked towards a mutually satisfactory version. If other editors, such as user:Bmb8609, user:207.192.213.7, or user:207.192.206.107 would like to change it, then it would be helpful if they would discuss their edits here. Cheers, -Willmcw 20:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


--- OK, let's discuss: Read the original article from beginning to end, and then try to tell me that it reads like a reference piece:

"The foibles of live television were exposed in October 2004 when at the start of singer Ashlee Simpson's second musical performance of the show, a pre-recorded backing track for the wrong song was accidentally played. It turned out that Simpson's father, her manager, had decided to use vocal guide track because her voice had been weak in rehearsal due to acid reflux, a condition from which she was known to suffer. The vocal track was shut off but the musical track continued. Not knowing what to do, the band switched songs and, after a few awkward moments, Simpson walked off the stage. She subsequently apologized for the error during the show's closing—the incident served to highlight the always precarious nature of live television, as noted by the night's host, Jude Law. Coincidentally, a team of reporters from the CBS news program 60 Minutes led by Lesley Stahl had been taping and interviewing during the production cycle, and recorded both the rehearsals and the immediate reactions by Lorne Michaels and others. Michaels said that he had never been asked about using a vocal track, and would not have allowed it. Since then the production practices of SNL have been scrutinzed by reporters and Michaels has admitted that backing tracks are sometimes used..."

It doesn't sound like an encyclopedia entry, it sounds like some extremely defensive Ashlee Simpson fan who's trying to stake a case against the public chastising her (not claiming that to be, but that's how it sounds to an outsider). I have a major pet peeve with many of the articles on this site (regarding controversial issues) where it's blatently obvious that someone (or possibly more) are trying to "sneak" in as many sentences they can in an atempt to sway opinion towards or against an issue, rather than telling it like it is, which is what an ENCYCLOPEDIA does. Just for the sake of argument, I asked several people around me to read this article for themselves (giving them no prior substance or resolution as to the content of the piece), just to be sure I wasn't being a total jerk about this, and every single person who read it agreed that it was an obvious attempt at editorializing, rather than documenting, the event. You may or may not realize it as often while writing, our own opinions will play on a totally subconsious level.

The second issue is that, while you may be correct in saying that this is the most newsworthy item in SNL in years, take a look at the paragraph describing - on what many would agree - is the most controversial moment in SNL history:

"...in a 1992 show hosted by Tim Robbins, musical guest Sinéad O'Connor, in anger, sang an a capella version of Bob Marley's song "War". At the end of that number, O'Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and shouted, "fight the real enemy". The telecast prompted over 3,000 telephone calls both to NBC and its affiliates."

Three sentences. The entries on moments like the Sinead O'Conner performance, or Charlie Rocket cursing on the air, for example, don't - or at least SHOULDN'T - attempt to go into great detail on things like "Who did, or didn't approve it," or "Who's ultimately responsible for it," (and if they do, they should also be edited). They should simply state the general WHOs, WHATs, WHEREs, WHENs and WHYs of an incident. Intricate details of the WHYs and HOWs belong only when it is sufficiantly RELEVANT to the subject at hand (in this case: The History of SNL).

The point is that minor details such as WHO made the decision, WHY it happend, HOW it happened, and WHO knew it was going to happen, and other things such as whether or not Simpson was known to have acid-reflux disease, are TOTALLY IRRELEVENT in an article about Saturday Night Live. It belongs in the ASHLEE SIMPSON article, and is perfectly suitable for such as the subject is about the person, and not the show. What if I were to go into Ashlee Simpson's article and write up a small history of SNL, just for the sake of setting up the proceeding story behind the controversy? It'd be deleted, because it's irrelevant and serves no knowledgeable purpose.

Wikipedia's slogan is "The Free Encyclopedia," not "The Free Newspaper/Magazine." Please don't misunderstand: This isn't a case for or against Ashlee Simpson. I personally could care less. It's a case for proper and concise documentation. --user:Bmb8609

Thanks for helping out with wikipedia, and for discussing your edits. This has turned out to be a controversial paragraph, which is why I reverted your change and asked you to discuss it here. There are two issues: the content of the material and its length. As for length, if we wanted to put SNL into the right proportion with its significance we'd probably merge it all into one article. ;) But if you'll review the other articles in this series then you'll see that there are long discussions of minor cast changes and similar forgotten occurences. 13 lines on how dull Weekend Update was in the early 80's! Heck, we've even got a whole article on the Franco is still dead joke. We have as much room as we need.
Regarding the content, it always seemed to me to be written in a clumsy manner- mostly my fault and also the result of accomodating editors. Your edits improved the readability but have changed the meaning. While this article is on SNL, not Ashlee, a sentence of explanatory details about the causes of the event are necessary. For the purposes of this article, what is most relevant is the reaction of the producers, which is much of what you cut. The fact that Michaels denied ever using backing tracks on camera, and it came out that he was wrong. And we haven't even added-in the fact that the following week's show made a big deal about it, both in the title sequence (Osama bin Laden) and the opening monologue - Kate singing and dancing. As for documentation, there's plenty available. Anyway, don't worry, if if gets too big we can always make it an article of its own! Cheers, -Willmcw 12:30, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
And this, my friends, is what I think we should do, make the damn thing its own article and let those Simpson fans (and you know who you are) do all the justifying and weedling they want. Let the edit wars take place in that article and leave the "History of SNL" out of it. As I mentioned above, I've already wasted too much time fighting a certain Wikipedian's edits. Please, someone make it a separate article and put a one-liner in this history article stating "In 2004, Ashlee Simpson had one of the most newsworthy musical performances in Saturday Night Live's history" and we can be done with it. There, now I've given the article a name, someone can start filling it in and cutting out the cruft from this article. Jeff schiller 03:21, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)
Ok, it's done. I removed the details of the Ashlee Simpson episode and put it in its own article. Please use that article to do all the edits and leave this article for SNL history. Thanks, Jeff schiller 21:35, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)
No, this is not a proper way to handle the issue. First off, it is one paragraph, plus a paragraph on the 60 minutes show. Second, to write that is is the most newsworthy thing that happened in history, and then to say nothing else about it, is downright bizarre. It is ironic that the Simpson fan didn't want it here because he thought it made Simpson look bad, and you apparently don't want it here because it makes SNL look bad. You are both wrong. It was the most newsworthy thing that happened on SNL and it does deserve to be included in this article. Let me add that I can provide references for it. I suspect that a lot of the content of this article is original research. Shall we take it paragraph by paragraph? Better just to include the relevent and verifiable info where it belongs, in this article. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:55, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't care if it's mentioned or not...the fact is I and several people have worked hard, and put in many hours into contributing to this page about the history of SNL (I've written several articles including revamping almost all of the 1980-85 history, and weekend update section) and everking contributes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to this article other than making sure we don't talk about ashlee simpson in the wrong light. i don't care AT ALL about simpson, whether or not she was lip synching or not, but his CONSTANT SUGAR-COATING of the issue is irritating in the fact that NO ONE CARES WHY SHE DID IT OR WHOS FAULT IT WAS. This is the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE article, and anyone coming here is probably not interested in the ins and outs of who decided what, or why ashlee was caught lip=synching or whatever. They want a decent history that touches base lightly on each notable moment and the effects of that moment. As big a deal as the news may have made about it, this whole fiasco had no long term effects on SNL (i.e. Charles Rocket's swearing getting Jean Doumaian fired), and it's not worth going into detail. What happened happened. Ashlee was onstage, her voice came over the speakers proving that she was either lip-synching or using a backing track (again, no average person who comes to read the history is really going to care, other than apparently everyking), she got embarrased and walked offstage, hilarity ensued, and the news made a big deal about it. END OF STORY I've taken my stand here, which is that if everyking INSISTS on having every facet of this story revealed, than I'm for that, and that INCLUDES the fact that it took ashlee THREE different excuses before coming up with acid reflux as the culprit (btw, I have an acid problem myself, and it doesn't affect my voice at all) AND, she was perfectly fine during the monologue, yet mysteriously "sick" when it came time to sing. If the whole "acid reflux" thing, and the 60 minutes aftermath just HAVE TO be included at the insistance of everyking (who, if you look at the history of this page, added them back after they were removed because, "[he] felt they were important"), then I say MY info is just as important. if he insists on his "important" info, then I suppose I'll have to stay here "'till doomsday" to ensure my "important" info doesn't get deleted either. If you honstly think everyking's biased edits are in attempt of being neutral then he has you fooled. look at the history of the main page, at first he INSISTED that we couldn't include the moment in the "infamous moments" section because it didn't compare favorably with other infamous moments. YOU CALL THAT BEING NEUTRAL??? When virtually every other person who contributes to this page (and when I say contribute, i mean WRITES articles and not just "correcting" other peoples' hard work) is against his bias (and previous discussions prove this) I think it's fair to say that we're probably right, and he's probably wrong. Whatever his feelings are on ashlee simpson are, is not our problem...it BECOMES our problem when me begins "tinkering" with other peoples articles (some of whom spent hours perfecting them) because they don't fit HIS POV and then calls himself "neutral". ha. And believe me, I wouldn't even be SAYING anything about this if 99% of the board didn't agree that they rather he just leave and stick to writing his own ashlee simpson articles. the fact that he's an admin is a joke

brian

[edit] Sources?

Do we have any sources for this article? I noiced that user:Bmb8609 added some interesting new material, but without any source. Then I noticed that there are essentially no sources for any of the assertions in this article. Can we cite our sources, please? Thanks. -Willmcw 21:45, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

sorry...my source was an article in Newsweek from October. I now have this cited with footnotes (this was the best way I could think of since I couldn't find any legal free version online), if there's a better way to cite this info please let me know. I will try to get around to citing other items on this site as well. Thanks user:bmb8609
Thanks. If the info has a source, it's that much more solid. Some of this stuff seems pretty flimsy. I don't know who wrote this, but there ought to be some sourcing for these kinds of assertions.
Although Fallon was quite popular, many believed that he and Sanz were far too derivative of Farley and Sandler, right down to Fallon playing the guitar and singing during Weekend Update. Both men were also criticized for their "going up" during many sketches—laughing through their lines and needling other cast members into doing the same. This became more and more common, in spite of the fact that Lorne Michaels swore his show would never become so insular or amateurish (one of the things he despised about The Carol Burnett Show).
That was the block that really caught my eye. "Unnamed critics" Cheers, -Willmcw 08:13, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
PS - regarding the Simpson incident material, facts are interesting but try to be brief. There are two stories in this matter. Simpson's and SNL's. This article should focus primarily on what SNL did, on and off camera, and how the public and other media reacted. That's why, despite Everyking's preference, Simpson's medical history should be minimized. Singers occasionally have throat problems of one kind or another, young ladies have disorders, and the details don't matter here, but it shouldn't be laughed off either. So the part about the control booth is relevent. The sentence:
The following week Simpson's father made a statement that Simpson's throat had been sore that day because of her acid reflux disease (despite the fact that she had speaking and singing roles in the opening monologue, in which her voice was not in any way strained)1.
Really has nothing to do with SNL. It belongs in the Simpson article. -Willmcw 08:29, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
Well, that's my preference also. I just want a minimal mention. Everyking 14:48, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Simpson incident wording

My goal, whether achieved or not, was to be succinct and neutral. I do feel strongly that the words "lip-syncing" should not be avoided. That's what she was doing in ordinary parlance. (It seems clear that the practice, though denied, is common in pop singing performances). It also seems clear that the phrase "backing track" or "guide track" is a euphemism if the track is used in such a way that it is fully audible to the performance's audience. It's not clear whether Simpson's hoarseness is germane in an article about SNL, but since I think this is going to be the description of the incident in Wikipedia, I left it in. I dithered and eventually decided to include the phrase "acid reflux disease" because, regardless of what I might think about Joe Simpson's excuse, what he wanted to convey was that the decision to use the backing track was not done lightly or casually or without good reason. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:01, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a distinction to be made between singing with a backing track and lip synching; Ashlee emphasized this distinction on her Today show appearance after the incident. Therefore it would be POV to side with one explanation. Everyking 14:24, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
IMHO your edit of 09:57, 20 Feb 2005 is an improvement; you've retained everything I think is important and you've significantly tightened up the paragraph. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:55, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am going to withdraw from the Ashlee dispute on this article; I feel very bad about being involved in any conflict here and so I want to think of this as a kind of penance. Everyking 05:34, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It'll all be the same in a hundred years, as my mom used to say. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:58, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
DP, some editors have been working on the stub version of this paragraph over at Talk:Saturday Night Live. The draft, which Everyking has given input towards, is based on an earlier paragraph here. But the new work that you and EK have done is even better. If you'd like to take a look over there and make any revisions, I'm sure it would improve the material. I'd be very happy to see something that everyone can agree on and which can go a few weeks without being disputed. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:44, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
I have to agree that what's there now is much better. It tells both sides of the story on a reasonable scale withough sugar-coating, unproven claims, or attempts to "victimize" either party. this is probably as good as its going to get.
I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to by "there." I don't think that the version in the Saturday Night Live article is good. I think that either the version in the talk page, Talk:Saturday Night Live, or a fresh condensation of what's in this article, History of SNL:2000-2010, would be much better. -Willmcw 07:24, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate organization

The History of Saturday Night Live (1990-1995) has some improvements that should be considered for the other articles in the series, such as:

  • eliminating the Season Breakdown section, promoting all items within it
  • moving season-specific comments to the appropriate section instead of lumping them all together in the introduction
  • adding a Hosts and musical guests section and providing a cross-reference there to the right section in List of Saturday Night Live hosts and musical guests

If you agree these changs represent improvements, consider applying them here too. Thanks. 66.167.139.170 11:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Ferrell Farewell

The salute to Will Ferrell in his last episode as a contract player was an influential moment in the show's history. It actually acknowledged one of the most beloved cast members of all time was leaving and SNL dedicated an entire last segment to saying goodbye. Please keep this in the Wiki. 02:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Goresnl.jpg

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