NBC Looks to Restore the Shine on ‘SNL’ : Television: The late-night series gets an overhaul, with cast and writer changes. ‘The show needs to be reinvented,’ a network executive says.

NEW YORK —  After a bad season that one critic compared to watching “late-period Elvis”--a great entertainer overweight and past his prime--”Saturday Night Live” was in need of a major overhaul.

Now it’s getting one. When the late-night show returns this fall, it will feature a new cast and a new writing staff, changes designed to re-energize the 20-year-old comedy institution.

“The show needs to be reinvented,” NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer said in an interview. “We need to recover that edge, that unpredictability that makes people want to watch.”

Only two of the current performers--Norm McDonald and Mark McKinney--are expected to return to what will be a smaller cast--probably eight principal stars. Sources said David Spade also may be back, but otherwise the cast is likely to feature a number of unknowns. Lorne Michaels, creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live,” has been auditioning performers in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Toronto in the last several months.

Some of the new cast members may be announced as early as next week.

Ohlmeyer, who oversees NBC Productions, which owns the series with Michaels, didn’t mince words about why the network felt the changes were needed, even though ratings for the show had remained steady.

“If you look at the past several seasons,” he said, “we haven’t had breakout performers like Dana Carvey or Billy Crystal. In the writing, we haven’t had many of the great characters that people have enjoyed seeing in sketches in the past. The cast had gotten too large and, frankly, some of them seemed to regard ‘Saturday Night Live’ as what they did between theatrical films. The energy was off. Sometimes people seemed to be reading cue cards rather than doing a live show.”

The show also will have “a dramatically different” writing staff when it returns, Ohlmeyer said. Jim Downey, the longtime producer and head writer, has left, and Ohlmeyer said it’s possible that he won’t be replaced--that the writing staff instead will be organized around departments, such as “Weekend Update.”

One writer who has been hired already is Steve Higgins, the former head writer on the now-defunct “Jon Stewart” talk show. He will supervise live skits on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Having everything go through one writer may have led to homogeneity,” Ohlmeyer said.

The show’s budget--which had soared to a reported $1.5 million a week--also will be reduced. “If you’ve got a smaller cast, you need fewer writers,” said Ohlmeyer, adding that he felt the streamlining would improve the show creatively.

Going after fresh comedic talent is more competitive today than it was when “Saturday Night Live” started. “The pool of creative talent is being stretched thin by all the sitcoms and comedy specials,” Ohlmeyer said.

The key to success, he said, will be not only finding performers early but also matching them with sketch writers to develop characters--and a following. “It’s how you use people and give them an opportunity to develop on a show that has created a lot of stars,” Ohlmeyer said.

But allowing them time off to make movies during the season will not be among the opportunities offered to the new cast members, said Ohlmeyer, noting another problem that plagued the show in recent years.

“The performers on the show will be exclusive to us,” he said, “which means they can do a movie on vacation, the way Kelsey Grammer [the star of NBC’s “Frasier”] does a movie.”

Although several of the theatrical films by “Saturday Night Live” performers were produced by Michaels, Ohlmeyer said that the producer agrees with him about the policy. Michaels declined to be interviewed for this article.

“Saturday Night Live” started coming under fire creatively from TV critics two seasons ago, and NBC executives met with Michaels a year ago to express their concerns. NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield publicly criticized him again last March for failing to make changes he felt had been discussed--angering Michaels.

“There were a number of issues we raised a year ago that Lorne may have felt he was addressing more than we did,” Ohlmeyer said. “But we’re very supportive of what he’s doing today.”

He said he hopes Michaels, who is in the third year of a four-year contract with NBC, will continue into the future with the show.

“Look, you have good years and bad years creatively on a show like this,” he said of Michaels. “You’re the executive producer when you get the Emmy and when you get the crappy reviews. Bureaucracies build up over time and need to be changed. A live comedy-variety show is probably one of the hardest things in television to produce, and this show has to please two generations of viewers, people today and those who remember only the best sketches from the past.”

The NBC executive said that he did not view Fox’s new late-night Saturday show, “Mad TV,” as a real threat to the NBC franchise, adding that “Fox has had problems in late night before.”

Is it possible that the genre of live, late-night sketch comedy has seen its greatest days?

“I think this genre will always have great possibilities,” Ohlmeyer responded. “We’ve got a great franchise and brand-name with ‘SNL,’ Lorne is psyched, and I think we’re taking the right steps to make it exciting.”