In a previous entry, Jester’s Blog encouraged readers to look for the reruns of complete 1970s Saturday Night Live episodes early Sunday mornings on NBC. Having seen Al Franken and Tom Davis, two of the key writers (and occasional performers) on those episodes discuss the origins of some of that classic comedy in a recent appearance in New York City, Jester found some reasons for that difference in tone from today’s SNL.

Speaking to Carl Arnheiter, who hosts interviews with comedians and comedy personalities in his occasional “Inside Joke” live show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York, Franken and Davis emphasize that while writers and performers certainly had to compete for airtime and attention on the original SNL, that competition is nowhere near as cutthroat as today, when the performers number about 15 rather than seven, and the writers number about 25, rather than nine.

“It was easier for the audience to get to know the players,” says Franken. Also, in the 1970s, SNL producer Lorne Michaels often had to scramble to fill out the show, recalls Davis. “Now they have three full versions of every show that they could do,” he says. Back then, “Franken and Davis Show” skits usually found their way on air because the show was short, he explained.

Another difference is SNL’s commercial parodies. “They were much less elaborate than they were even in 1985-95,” says Franken, who returned to SNL for another run as a writer/performer in those years, as Lorne Michaels returned after five years away. Now, SNL’s fake commercials are filmed with a style and sets that look like the real thing -- where on the original, Dan Aykroyd would get across the idea of the Bass-o-Matic just standing at a simple kitchen counter, filmed by just one camera.

Critics may constantly return to the refrain as each new cast or incarnation of SNL appears that show isn’t as funny or edgy as it used to be. But in one area, at least, to hear it from Franken, this may be true. For awhile, the show had running skits poking fun at network boss Fred Silverman, mainly for overseeing a prime-time schedule that had dropped NBC to third place in those years. This culminated in Franken’s on air monologue about “Limo for a Lame-o” complaining about Silverman getting a company limo, while he, Al Franken, did not. Silverman got something on the order of 5,000 pieces of hate mail as a result of the bit. But nothing ever really happened to Franken, who, Davis recalled, even got away with writing Silverman a letter explaining why the bit was funny.

Fast forward to 1995 and the O.J. Simpson trial. Norm MacDonald, as Weekend Update” host constantly ripped on O.J., as well he should have in that role on the show. But another NBC executive, Don Ohlmeyer, happened to be friends with O.J., and basically canned MacDonald from Update as a result. One can see the difference in “edge” from these comparable incidents.