Originally, creator Lorne Michaels had to call the program NBC's Saturday Night because Howard Cosell had a show on called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.
NBC bought the naming rights and in 1977 it was dubbed "Saturday Night Live."
The Smithsonian explains how it all began.
“SNL” owes its start to Johnny Carson’s desire for more time off. In 1974, the talk show host asked NBC to air reruns of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” on weeknights instead of weekends, as the network had been doing for years. That way, he could have some extra days off during the week.
NBC President Herbert Schlosser approached Dick Ebersol, the vice president of late-night programming at the network, about creating a live show that could air at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday nights. “Schlosser wanted to try something new in that period,” says Doug Hill, co-author of Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, a 1985 book that chronicles the first ten years of the show. “He wanted a show that could be like ‘The Today Show’ or ‘The Tonight Show,’ something that had the chance to be on for a long time.”
The casting of Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman was brilliant. George Carlin was tabbed as the first guest host and the rest is history.
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