Second City Television: Encyclopedia II - Second City Television - Controversy

Second City Television - Controversy

Seen today as one of the landmarks in the evolution of television and sketch comedy, SCTV had its share of controversial moments during its run. When the show was picked up by NBC and expanded to ninety minutes, NBC reportedly had wanted several changes to the format (including replacing the stable of "aging" characters like Bobby Bitman with "younger" versions of themselves played by the same actors, and putting most of the stable and recurring characters and sketches in the first forty five minutes of the show while saving experimental pieces for the last half hour, a la Saturday Night Live). The SCTV cast, crew and writers, isolated from NBC's bureaucracy in Edmonton, Alberta typically ignored these notes and produced the shows they wanted to with almost unprecedented freedom.

One early show included a crane shot in the production of the sketch "Polynesiantown". NBC was furious at the expensive shot being used. Rather than show contrition for this, the writers went on to lampoon the situation by having Guy Caballero lambast Polynesiantown producer Johnny LaRue for using the shot, and sending him out to do a show with just himself and one camera on the street — a show that ended up using a vastly more expensive helicopter shot in its ending. This — plus the habit that SCTV had of putting on loose parodies of the network executives who would fly up to give notes — led to far less network interference but may also have led to NBC releasing the show to Cinemax.

Another moment of controversy came when SCTV won the 1982 Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a variety or music program. The award was presented by Milton Berle and Martha Raye, and Berle didn't give up the stage or microphone when the SCTV performers and writers came on stage to receive their award. Berle interrupted Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times, and several cast members and writers looked upset as they left the stage. In typical style, SCTV recreated the moment on a later show, in a parody of A Star Is Born. In that scene, Milton Berle interrupts an Oscar speech, and Joe Flaherty beats him up, shouting "you'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Milty!"

One other point of contention between SCTV and several different networks they were on was the use of laugh tracks. As SCTV wasn't a live show, it paced its comedy accordingly, and several pieces were more outre than standard network fare. The use of a laugh track often stepped clumsily on the punchlines as a result, and there are some reports that the laugh track editor admitted to not getting SCTV's humor and just threw laughs in wherever they would fit.

Even years after the show left production, controversy clung to it. For years, SCTV was unavailable on video tape or in any form except by reedited half hour programs that cut out some of the most memorable scenes. This is because the producers and editors putting the original shows together never bothered to get clearance to use copyrighted music — for example, the "Fishin' Musician" show ended with Bing Crosby singing "Gone Fishin'", even though SCTV never got the rights to use the music or performance. As a result, the shows couldn't be reproduced on DVD or video tape until after the laborious rights issues were resolved and clearances were received. In some cases (as with the aformentioned Crosby song) clearances couldn't be secured after the fact and new music had to be edited in its place for the 2005 DVD releases of the 90-minute shows.

Finally, one bone of contention even today was the apparent sexism built into the contracts for the performing cast. All the cast wrote extensively on the show. However, the male cast members (Ramis, Levy, Flaherty, Candy, Thomas and later Short and Moranis) were credited — and paid — as writers as well as actors. The female cast members — Andrea Martin and Catherine O'Hara — were paid as actors only. This remained a sore subject as late as the SCTV Anniversary Reunion Show at the Aspen Comedy Festival hosted by Conan O'Brien.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki