In case you missed it, here’s the opening bit from the last episode of Saturday Night Live, worth watching especially for Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld, star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc.), who does a perfect impression of Bernie Sanders. (Sanders said that Larry David does a better Bernie Sanders than he does.)

Just to show I’m nearly as old as I am pedantic, Saturday Night Live was actually the name of a live prime-time ABC variety show hosted by Howard Cosell, far better known as a sports anchor. The show also had a regular cast called the Prime Time Players. It ran only 18 episodes starting in the fall of 1975.

At the same time NBC launched its own late-night live variety show called simply Saturday Night with a cast called the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. In very short order the public got confused about which show was called Saturday Night Live, with almost everybody referred to the NBC program by that name, especially after the ABC show folded. So eventually NBC adopted the name formally, and now refers to it officially as Saturday Night Live or SNL. But the original title is still heard at the end of almost every opening skit, including the one above, when someone exclaims, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

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