‘Saturday Night Live” – which had been drawing big audiences to online repeats of its comedy routines – has started making even the stuff it cut out which never made it to TV available to Internet viewers.
A sketch that was cut from last weekend’s show turned up, officially sanctioned by “SNL,” on Hulu, the online video site jointly owned by Fox and NBC.
In the sketch, filmed during the show’s dress rehearsal, Andy Samberg appears as Barack Obama’s chief of staff designate Rahm Emanuel.
Until now, “SNL” has posted only popular sketches that had already aired.
Tina Fey’s impersonations of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin helped boost greatly the online fortunes of both “SNL” and Hulu in October, when the election was in full swing.
According to comScore, Hulu went from 2.85 million unique visitors in September to 5.34 million in October. NBC.com jumped from 16 million uniques in September to almost 24.8 million uniques in October, while the network’s online “SNL” channel shot up 85 percent.
“SNL” chief Lorne Michaels is reportedly in talks with NBC to launch a separate “SNL” video site, which would regularly feature unaired sketches, according to Broadcasting & Cable.
