Saturday vs. Monday Nights Live

It occurred to me this week that Monday Night Football is to sports broadcasting what Saturday Night Live is to comedy. Every year those pundits "in the know" proclaim that this, finally, is the year that the program will die the final death, putting an end to years of grasping, struggling, lingering illness. Every year the new cast sucks way more than the casts of years past. And each year, some good bits are sandwiched between huge blocks of inane crap.

And yet, both franchises continue on, drawing decent audiences and entertaining a lot of people. In three to five years, those same pundits will look back and say, "You know, the show was a lot better back then than it is now." At some point the "Law of Conservation of Suckiness" should kick in and show that it's a physical impossibility for either of these programs to keep spiraling down in quality every single year for so long -- eventually you'd reach some black-hole-like level of suckitude that would cause the collapse of the universe and everything in it.

Perhaps at some level that's true, and both SNL and MNF have merged in some kind of strange Television Singularity, where they are indistinguishable from each other. I've assembled a little chart showing the comparisons between the two so you can see for yourself if that's the case.

No, I have nothing better to do with my time. Sue me.

	SNL	MNF
Concept	Talented individuals plying their craft in front of a live audience, complete with bone-crushing witticisms and moments of high emotion	Talented individuals plying their craft in front of a live audience, complete with bone-crushing hits and moments of high emotion
Opening Sequence	An interminable melange of music and action showing the featured cast for the week that makes no sense and serves to set the audience's teeth on edge.	An interminable melange of music and action showing the featured teams for the week that makes no sense and serves to set the audience's teeth on edge.
Best Parts	Midway through the show when "SNL News" comes on and you get highlights of the week's news	Midway through the show -- halftime -- when you get highlights of the week's games
Worst Parts	"Musical" Guests and the last half hour -- both almost guaranteed to suck	"Drop-In" Guests from actors in other shows on the parent network and the last quarter of the game -- both almost guaranteed to suck
Best Cast	The first one - Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner	The first one - Jackson, Cosell and Meredith
Worst Cast	The current one (regardless of which the current one actually is).	The current one (regardless of which the current one actually is).
Biggest Controvery	Sinead O'Connor ripping up the Pope's picture, saying "Fight the real enemy!"	Howard Cosell ripping up Alvin Garrett's ethnicity, saying the African American wide receiver for the Redskins was a "little monkey."