The Political Impact of Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live celebrated the first episode of its 50th season last Saturday. The episode began with a comedic sketch in which their star-studded cast played caricatures of both presidential candidates and running mates to emphasize the various quirks of both political sides. The segment provided valuable social commentary on the current state of politics in an entertaining and insightful manner. While the segment mocked both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the depictions portrayed Harris and Tim Walz in a most positive light. SNL has been no stranger to providing political commentary in its skits, as it has always poked fun at trends and issues current to them. As the NPR reports, Al Franken, who wrote the earliest political sketches for SNL, wanted the content to appeal to "people who knew both a little – and a lot – about politics" in a bipartisan and comedic style. It is difficult to measure how much SNL's political sketches shape public opinion surrounding politics, but what is clear is that there is a massive audience eager to tune into what their latest commentary is.

Andrew Dismukes portrays ABC News journalist, David Muir in opening scene.

SNL is not the only show to be celebrated for delivering news in an entertaining, comedic style; various shows like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show remain massively popular. A poll conducted by Time found that Jon Stewart, the former host of The Daily Show, was America's most trusted newscaster by a wide margin. This success is largely attributed to people's frustration with mainstream political news networks, like the one SNL parodied in its opening scene in their latest episode. SNL has fought hard to distinguish itself from the rest of mainstream news, positioning itself as the fun, cool alternative by keeping up with current memes and highlighting trending celebrities. Stats on viewership show that most of SNL's viewership is younger, with its largest viewing demographic being between ages 30 and 44. However, the current showrunners get younger people excited about the show. Since all eyes are on the younger vote in this upcoming election, SNL will be a powerful news source to observe.