Salt Lake City NBC affiliate KSL will begin airing “Saturday Night Live.”
The station announced the move on its facebook page saying, “Programming Note: Starting this fall, KSL is pleased to welcome Saturday Night Live to its weekly line-up, on Saturday nights at 10:30. More changes and updates to the fall line-up are coming soon – stay with us and we’ll keep you posted!”
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, there’s always been a misunderstanding about why the station never aired the late night sketch comedy show.
When KSL became an NBC affiliate in 1995, the station didn’t want to lose its very successful late-night local sports shows. It offered to air “SNL” on Saturdays at 11:35 p.m. – an offer NBC rejected.
“It was a business decision,” Tami Ostmark, KSL’s vice president of marketing, research and promotion, told The Tribune. “That’s still the case today.” The Tribune said “Sports Beat Saturday” is no longer the ratings powerhouse it once was, which may have prompted the move.
KSL recently stopped airing the NBC series “Hannibal” because it said the show was too graphic. It also refused to air “The New Normal” at the start of the 2012 season. The previous year it passed on airing “The Playboy Club.”
KSL is owned by Bonneville International which is owned by Deseret Management Corporation which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
TVSpy has reached out to KTVX-KUCW for its reaction to losing one of its shows. We’ll update when we hear back.