Shark Bytes

I LOVED the show!! I was in Jr. High and thought it was GREAT! I will NEVER forget Howard and Ali singing the duet "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." It was great. The whole show was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek ... but - apparently - no one understood that. When you think back on the show ... the JOKE was that HOWARD was the emcee. He was very much in on the joke. Howard to Ali, "Can you bake a pie?" Ali to Howard, "No." Howard back to Ali in his best Cosell voice, "Neither can I." I LOVED that show!!

Jump the Shark:I had to comeback to the place where I tried to confirm the likes of the "gimmick" detective as you said and a possible Starsky and Hutch resemblance.And that is the Not Ready For Prime Time,"Original Second City",Players;though I may be wrong about the chronology in the title.Most of all I wanted to salute Gilda Radner! whom I was seedking in the back of my mind as Murray,Akroyd,
Chase,somehow Hanks goes along with possible other (spell me on that),guests and the groundbreaking John Belushi.I don't think that is a false claim.The Blues Brother's,Animal House,as Samurai Sandwich and the Continental Divide;that was star power a script that could be improv'd and
with the necessary cutting floor editing.I wonder since that was before
"any of my relations" broke into cinema why that turned out to be the last movie That Guy ever made.

Oh you all must have been watching something else That skit with Howard and Billy Crystal was priceless1!! I'd give my right arm to own a copy of that night's show.

For the person who asked if Billy Crystal was part of the Cosell production: The person who went from this SNL to the other SNL was Bill Murray.

I think this show was called Live Saturday Night and I watched it once because confused it with another show that started that season called Saturday Night Live. We can see which one lasted. The show I saw had the Bay City Rollers on it--another one hit wonder. Monday Night Football was never the same after Howard Cosell left, but he won't be missed as a variety show host--in fairness to him, variety shows were a dying genre so I don't think anyone would have made it hosting a Saturday evening prime time variety show. But there were plenty others who would have seemed more comfortable as a host than Humble Howard.

From the very beginning, by trying to revive the variety show in the Ed Sullivan style. I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned another link with NBC's SNL: Cosell's crew were called the "Prime Time Players" while NBC's cast were the "NOT Ready for Prime Time Players". And wasn't Billy Crystal part of the Cosell production?

The one memory I've retained of this steaming pile of hippo excrement of a show is when ol' Howie sang (and I use that term VERY loosely) a number with O.J. Simpson and actor Lee Majors about what night you could catch them on the ol' TV (Howie: Saturdays and Mondays; Lee: Wednesday at 8; O.J.: Any given day...or something like that). In some cultures, I think this is what they call euthanasia...

It's very existence was a jump from quality TV. The one redeeming factor of the show was that its sketch repertory company included former National Lampoon players Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, and Brian Doyle Murray.

Dude, you've got it backwards. The name of this show is "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell," which necessitated the program we now know as "Saturday Night Live" to call itself "NBC's Saturday Night" for the first couple of seasons (remember the opening, "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"??). When NBC flushed this Howard Cosell vehicle down the crapper, "NBC's Saturday Night" became "Saturday Night Live."

In reading the comments on the Howard Cosell Saturday Night Live show, I have a book called Cruisin' America by the late Rick Sklar on his involvement in the creation of Top 40 radio. There's a chapter on John Lennon meeting Howard Cosell about the prospect of him appearing on Howard's show. But Howard wanted The Beatles, not just John by himself, and wanted Lennon to help reunite the group. Lennon was disappointed and decided not to do the show. That's when Cosell went on to book the Bay City Rollers and billed them as the Next Beatles.

According to Cosell's autobiography (actually a pretty good read, as he insults himself as well as any of his critics) John Lennon and Yoko Ono were Cosell fans, and wanted to appear on the show...and Lennon commented that the First show may just be as good a reason as any for the Beatles to reunite, and actually made a attempt at a performance! Obviously, it didn't happen. Cosell actually had high goals for the show, but it soon tuned into a wretched "Sullivan" remake. It's sole claim to fame was that it forced NBC's "Saturday Night" to call itself "Saturday Night-Live" because of confusion with Cosell's "Saturday Night with Cosell"...

The FIRST show was great with Linda Ronstadt and her backup band The Eagles, but Howard tried to copy Ed Sullivan to closely by hyping through out the show the next weeks appearance of Britain's Hottest mega hit group The Bay City Rollers (ala The Beatles). Even in the tease clips they looked lamer then the original rip off group The Monkees, somewhat paralleling Howard's ripping off Ed.

This show was so bad, I turned down free tickets from my roommate for "NBC Saturday Night" (you know, the "other" live show with Chevy Chase, etc.), mistakenly thinking they were for this turkey. I've been kicking myself ever since.

On the very first show, when he introduced the Bay City Rollers (I think that was the name of the group) as the "next Beatles." I really started wondering what was in those cigars he was always smoking.

This was PAINFUL to view from the get go. Just imagine Howie and Barbara Walters sing a duet. i STILL cringe.