Season 1

The show ran weekly, for a little over a year, from November 17, 1973 to December 28, 1974. Originally an hour in length, after 13 weeks it was cut down to half-an-hour due to the difficulty of putting together the very considerable amount of material required for a one-hour show. Performers on the show included John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, John DeBella, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis, who was one of the co-writers for the National Lampoon movie Animal House. Other writers and performers on the show included Anne Beatts, Richard Belzer, Christopher Cerf, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joe Flaherty, Christopher Guest, who did many of the show's musical parodies, Ed Subitzky, Douglas Kenney (another co-writer of Animal House) and Bruce McCall.