‘Saturday Night Live’: More perspective on Donald Trump’s hosting gig
For those of you out there scrambling through your TV guide and potentially wondering where “Saturday Night Live” is, the simple answer is that there is no installment airing on NBC this weekend. The simple reason for that is that it’s Halloween! Who is going to be home to watch?
The show hosted by Donald Trump is airing on November 7, and if somehow you’ve missed the avalanche of headlines about it, people are not particularly happy about the choice. Some are boycotting NBC over it, thinking that the network is doing something that is disrespectful to the Latino community for the sake of ratings. Is this statement true? We certainly understand those who feel that way, and almost any network will do anything for ratings. You can accuse anyone of that.
Ultimately, our take on the whole matter is this: We don’t think anything that Trump does on “SNL” is going to get him elected President, or change the mind of anyone out there. Therefore, the only thing we’re probably going to get out of this is a fairly mediocre show given that Trump is not a trained performer. We’ve seen him in sketches before.
There are some headlines out there about Eva Longoria, who is an activist in addition to being an actress, “defending” NBC and Lorne Michaels for the choice of Trump. That’s not really what she is doing. Instead, she has just said that NBC and Lorne have the right to hire whoever they want, but Latino viewers in turn have a right not to watch it:
“We as a Hispanic community have a choice to not watch it. That’s our choice … That’s what we can do. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Boycott that night, and then let that show feel that ‘oh, OK we did make a bad decision.’ You cannot limit that choice to producers or a network. That’s their choice to do that. But what you can do is [say], ‘OK you made that choice, therefore we will do this.’”
So there you have it: If you don’t love the choice, remember that NBC made the move with ratings in mind. If you want to show displeasure with the move, hurt their ratings.
We’ll have more news on all things “SNL” very soon over at the link here. Also, you can sign up here to get some additional TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)