Saturday Night Live (season 7)
Saturday Night Live aired its seventh season during the 1981–1982 television season on NBC. The seventh season started on October 3, 1981 and ended on May 22, 1982. A total of 20 episodes were broadcast.
Following the termination of producer Jean Doumanian and the majority of her cast members (repertory players Gilbert Gottfried, Ann Risley, and Charles Rocket and feature players Yvonne Hudson, Patrick Weathers, and Matthew Laurance), the show was shut down due to the commencement of the 1981 WGA strike.
Dick Ebersol (Lorne Michaels' co-creator of SNL) was hired as Doumanian's replacement. The new cast of SNL for this season were the same ones from the episode Ebersol produced on the April 11, 1981 episode: Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky and Tony Rosato along with the Doumanian era's sole survivors Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius were fired following the April 1981 episode while Laurie Metcalf and unseen castmember Emily Prager weren't asked back to be cast members on the show.
Ebersol then hired two new cast members: Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole. Both were hired to fill the gap left by Metcalf and Prager.
Wanting to distance the show from its first five seasons, Ebersol cut the popular opening line Live from New York, It's Saturday Night! from the cold openings. In fact, sometimes cold openings weren't even shown and the monologues were skipped over almost entirely. These changes weren't permanent, as Ebersol decided to reverse them for the eighth season.
Another thing he changed was Weekend Update. The segment went through its first name change and became "SNL Newsbreak". At the newsdesk was feature player Brian Doyle-Murray with Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole alternating as co-anchor.
Additionally, this was the only season without announcer Don Pardo. Instead the voice-overs were done by Mel Brandt, except for two episodes that aired in December 1981 (see below) where veteran NBC News announcer Bill Hanrahan handled such duties.
During the season, original cast member John Belushi died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin. The original airing of the episode hosted by Robert Urich had a tribute to Belushi.
This was also the final season for Doyle-Murray, Ebersole and Rosato. All were let go to make room for new cast members in the following season.
Read more about Saturday Night Live (season 7): Cast, Episodes
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