‘Saturday Night Live’ Actually Live in CA to Meet Anti-Trump Demand

NBC’s Saturday Night Live will air live for the first time in across every time tone in the United States on Saturday, April 15.

Despite being “live from New York,” the show has only previously been shown live in the Eastern (11:30 p.m.) and Central (10:30 p.m.) time zones, and on delay elsewhere.

The last four episodes of the 2016-7 season will be live — as in, actually live.

The reason: Saturday Night Live has become a political rallying point for the left, more than ever before.

Conservatives have switched off, but liberals have flocked to the show, boosting SNL to its highest ratings in 24 years, according to Uproxx and LAist.

(The 1992-3 season was Dana Carvey’s last, and featured legends including Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, and many others — including future Sen. Al Franken.)

During the 2016 presidential election, Saturday Night Live was pro-Hillary Clinton and anti-Donald Trump. In the fall, it substituted the avowedly partisan Alec Baldwin for Trump impersonator James Hammon, who made the apparently unforgivable mistake of calling Trump “the most positive person I have ever seen,” and used his character to entertain rather than to editorialize.

Later, after Clinton’s surprise defeat, the show featured Clinton impersonator Kate McKinnon performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” exploiting the singer’s death for a moment of collective liberal mourning.

Since then, the show has continued to feature Baldwin mocking Trump, and portrays Trump adviser (and former Breitbart News executive chairman) Stephen K. Bannon as the Grim Reaper.

Comedian Melissa McCarthy achieved brief bipartisan appeal with her impression of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, earlier this year, but her character became less funny and more political in subsequent appearances.

She will host the season’s penultimate episode on May 13.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.