CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Saturday Night Live season 2

season of television series

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ7426682 ↗
Source-derived summary

The second season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC from September 18, 1976 to May 21, 1977.

History

Following the cancellation of ABC's Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, NBC changed the name of the show from NBC's Saturday Night to NBC's Saturday Night Live, for the 17th episode of this second season – the episode hosted by Jack Burns on March 26, 1977. The name was changed back to NBC's Saturday Night on the season's 18th episode, hosted by Julian Bond, on April 9, 1977 and would not return to Saturday Night Live until the third season.

The shows on October 16, October 23, and October 30 1976 were live from NBC's studio complex in Brooklyn, NY. NBC News used Studio 8-H for Presidential election coverage.

The first show of this season was the last to feature The Muppets in The Land of Gorch, who had appeared in segments that were unpopular with fans and the SNL writers. Jim Henson was reportedly displeased with the amount of creative control he had over the scripts. Jerry Juhl said that Henson was "very frustrated" with his input into the scripts, and recalled that the SNL writers "didn't have any real handle" on Henson's concept. "Jim would come in with ideas, and sit with them, and give them wonderful ideas, and they wouldn't know how to fly with them," Juhl recalled. In a 1977 interview with Playboy, head writer/performer Michael O'Donoghue referred to the Muppets as "fucking Muppets ... little hairy facecloths" made from the refuse after they cleaned up after Woodstock.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Saturday Night Live season 2” is season of television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Saturday, Night and Live, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1977—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Saturday, Night and Live is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “season of television series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7426682. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976 and 1977.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Saturday Night Live season 2”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Saturday Night Live season 2 primary sources, Saturday Night Live season 2 archive and Saturday research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Saturday Night Live season 2”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Saturday Night Live season 2” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.