"The biggest sort of fight at the beginning": SNL creator Lorne Michaels reflects on the show's early challenges

SNL creator Lorne Michaels's October 11, 2025, exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly featured him reflecting on various interesting things.

One of the things he recalled was facing when the show began. He talked about sound recording, challenges he and his team faced while using a boom, and more.

Lorne Michaels also talked about shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show from 1956, and recalled how they all used the boom for sound recording at the time. With that, the sound was "more than good enough."

However, when SNL started, the sound and music recording was one in an entirely different way.

"If you look at, say, Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show (in 1956) or the Beatles (in 1964) for that matter, it's all on a boom (microphone), you know, and the sound was more than good enough for that period for them to catch fire and all that. But by the time we came on, the music was recorded in a completely different way, and television was still using a boom. So that was the biggest sort of fight at the beginning," shared Lorne Michaels.

SNL's Lorne Michaels reflects on how sound and music recording has changed over the years

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels' recent interview with Entertainment Weekly was published on October 11, 2025. During the discussion, he recalled how the show started and how things had been ever since, especially the sound and music aspects.

While sharing about incidents and technical difficulties they faced almost 50 years ago, he also talked about various music genres:

"Rock-and-roll people did not do television because they sounded terrible. So we had to figure that out, and that was a big, big fight over the first season."

For the fans who might not know, SNL's first episode aired on October 11, 1975, and was hosted by George Carlin. It featured four musical performances. Janis Ian and Billy Preston attended as musical guests. Since the second episode, Lorne Michaels had already started working on how they could improve music.

Later, the second episode featured Paul Simon, along with Phoebe Snow and Randy Newman's songs.

Sharing more from back then, the SNL creator added:

"When Paul Simon did the second show, I brought (music producer) Phil Ramone in, who was working with him that summer on Still Crazy (After All These Years). And the television audio guy was not thrilled about that. Just the idea that we were gonna mic it differently. Remember, Elvis is him and the Jordanaires, and a boom is covering all their music. And now it was different."

He talked about how viewers enjoyed the music on TV while "it was all good enough." By the 1970s, there had been technological advancements, and viewers expected even better quality. He also talked about how television had to "keep up" with viewers' expectations as the sound and music had evolved over time.

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Fans can now stream the recently released SNL Season 51 Episode 2.

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