You aren’t allowed to be surprised that this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live was bad. You can be surprised by just how bad it was, but if you were surprised that Elon Musk, a billionaire, who has never done anything funny and has never shown a sense of humor about who he is and or his cult of personality, isn’t a great comedian, then I can’t help you. You’re a buffoon.
And look, you’re not alone. Clearly NBC executives, SNL writers, and even Lorne Michaels himself were dumb enough to think this would work despite mountains of evidence going in that this was going to be one of the worst weeks in the show’s history.
Every station in America has, at some point, kicked around the idea of taking a well-known name and trying to turn them into a broadcaster. A lot has to go right to be successful. Before you even get to the breaks, you have to make sure you have put your money on the right horse.
SNL is a show with a long history. This may be easy to forget, but the show has made the same mistakes it did with Elon Musk over and over again. There is a lesson in that for sports radio. I guess since we now cover the whole talk radio spectrum, there is a lesson for it in news/talk too.
Remember April of 1996? Another billionaire was making headlines for doing something stupid and SNL wanted to capitalize on it. So they invited Steve Forbes to host the show and it was TERRIBLE! Forbes looked at the cue cards the entire time, at multiple points, turning his head completely away from the person he was supposed to be talking to in his scene. During his monologue, he stared right down the barrel of the camera with a look of absolute horror on his face.
People in the sports world have fond memories of the time Michael Jordan hosted the show. Y’all, I’m here to remind you that it was BAD. The Daily Affirmation sketch in that episode is an all-timer, but overall, Jordan was awful. The guy has charisma, but he doesn’t have “can carry a comedy show for 90 minutes” charisma.
The biggest name isn’t always the right person to build a show around. How many times have we seen former players on ESPN or former politicians on CNN and/or FOX News and instantly recognized that offering an opinion is not their strong suit? Some people are just better working from a pre-written speech or working in an environment manicured and controlled to make sure they are never challenged. There is no amount of work you can do with them to prepare them for a career in talk radio if they cannot just have a normal conversation where they may be challenged a bit.
I’ll circle back to something else I said about Elon Musk at the top of this column, because it is another huge red flag. Musk doesn’t think there is anything funny about himself. He doesn’t see the idea of him hosting a comedy show as absurd, because he has bought into his own bullshit. Remember the diver that he called a pedophile because the guy said Elon Musk’s idea for rescuing kids trapped in an underwater tunnel wouldn’t work?
Plenty of people in the public eye are like that. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you hire someone like that to host a show and they turn out to be Michael Irvin, a force of nature when it comes to stage presence and charm. Most times though, you get Eric Mangini or Ray Lewis or Paul Pierce or Trent Dilfer or Lou Holtz, guys that take themselves so seriously and do not understand why anyone is allowed to question them that they would rather shut down disagreement than roll with it and create something interesting.
Why did Peyton Manning and The Rock work as SNL hosts? Because they recognized and played along with the absurdity of them telling jokes on a show that spawned comedic geniuses like Eddie Murphy, Phil Hartman and Chris Rock. Why is Pat McAfee great on TV and on radio? Because he recognizes the absurdity of anyone looking at him as an expert on football just because he was a punter.
If you’re betting on a guy that doesn’t like looking dumb or refuses to ever believe he is wrong, you may as well start updating your resume. Personalities like that can work as the focal point of a show, but it is rare that they do and even rarer that those shows last. What a co-host, a producer, and a programmer need in a partner is someone that will take the advice of the great Kendrick Lamar – “Bitch, sit down. Be humble.”
I have written before about things like improv classes and talking to people in other formats about learning how to be a better broadcaster. If you were to ask your ex-jock or ex-coach or whoever to do those things, would they? You don’t have to immediately cast them to the side if the answer is no. If that is the answer though, is that where the conversation stops? If it is, you are probably about to invest in someone that doesn’t have any intention of growing or getting better than they are right now with no experience.
SNL can afford to do that with hosts. Those people are in town for a week and then, if it didn’t work out, they can be out of the show’s life forever. Programmers and radio stations can’t afford that kind of risk though. We aren’t building for a week to grab a few headlines and get a couple of clips to go viral.
If you are building for longterm success, you have to build around someone that wants to be as successful in the media as they were on the court or in politics. Hosting a show is fun, but it is a job. It is a reality you have to understand and look for candidates that recognize that. Saddling your employees with whatever talk radio’s answer to Elon Musk hosting Saturday Night Live is and saying “figure it out” is not just evidence of your ineptitude, it is disrespectful to the people that are going to have to pick up that person’s slack.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
