THE BATTLE FOR SATURDAY NIGHT

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

WAS THERE A SHOW on television last season more passionately reviled than Saturday Night Live? Journalists devoted endless column inches to skewering SNL's puerile sketches as viewers with little else to watch tuned in compulsively to see just how low this once cherished institution could go--to marvel, for example, at how many unendurable minutes a skit about vomiting policemen could actually last. SNL was so hated it was strangely hot.

That there has been little to loathe outright on SNL this season has proved a mixed blessing. The revamped SNL that premiered in September with six new cast members is significantly better than it was last year, and the mood among staff members has brightened. As one writer puts it, "You don't have to walk down the street anymore and overhear people talking about how horrible the show is." But there is an unfortunate flip side to that truth: people don't seem to be talking about Saturday Night Live very much at all. Animosity has turned to apathy. The show's audience has been shrinking steadily for years--ratings dropped from 8.7 Nielsen points in 1992-93 to 6.9 last year--but this season ratings fell off even more dramatically, to a measly 5.5, a 25% decline from a year ago.

Part of the problem is that SNL now has to contend with serious network competition each week in the form of Mad TV, Fox's one-hour sketch comedy show based on the hit-or-miss satire of Mad magazine. Though there has rarely been a show that sounded less auspicious on paper, Mad TV has turned out to be a formidable opponent. It has yet to beat SNL in ratings, but it is gaining an edge among twenty-and thirtysomething males, a group perennially coveted by advertisers. It has also developed a following among teenagers who can be readily found on the Internet proclaiming its superiority with appropriately jejune postings like "Mad TV blows SNL away." Notes Steven Klein, media director at the ad agency Kirshenbaum & Bond: "Mad TV is seen [among advertisers] as something with a lot of potential."

From its MTV-ish opening-credit sequence to its no-frills dorm-lounge set, Mad TV has an edginess that Lorne Michaels' once revolutionary show has long lacked--it is Spin to SNL's Rolling Stone. Mad TV is produced by 10 writers as opposed to SNL's 19. There is no guest host or regular musical act, and surely part of the appeal for teenagers lies in the assurance that they can tune in and never be confronted with the image of 1970s star (and eternal guest host) Chevy Chase in a mock game show or a Paul Simon--Edie Brickell duet. Significantly, Mad TV boasts a more balanced cast than its competitor. Among the group of eight there are three women and three black cast members. SNL's larger troupe of 11 features three women and only one black cast member, Tim Meadows.

The main creative forces behind Mad TV, Fax Bahr and Adam Small, were writers on the sketch show In Living Color. Perhaps because Mad is free of the white Ivy League frat-boy image that has burdened the world of late-night network comedy--just last week John Pike, a late-night programming executive at cbs resigned over accusations that he had made racial slurs in a meeting with members of the comedy group the State--Mad TV has taken bigger risks tackling controversial racial issues. In a sketch that took a sharp knife to the culture of victimhood, Bryan Callen portrayed a slacker who felt beaten up by the world because he was one-eighth black. Callen, as white as Matthew Perry, unleashed a rabid tirade about the injustices he suffered because of his "appearance." More irreverent still was a send-up of Mad About You titled Mad About Jew, which imagined Louis Farrakhan married to Whoopi Goldberg, here a publicist for Comic Relief 15.

Not surprisingly, such spoofs of pop culture are a staple of Mad TV's lineup, and some of its filmed movie parodies have been especially clever. Gump Fiction set America's most beloved dumbbell in the world of Quentin Tarantino, and unlike so many famously unfunny SNL skits, it actually gained momentum as it went along: See Forrest dance awkwardly with an Uma Thurman look-alike; see him assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

Of course, Mad TV is not without its lapses. Though it has steadily improved since its unpromising early episodes, there are still sketches so heavy-handed in their attempt to appear politically incorrect that they are virtually unwatchable, such as one offensive and recurring bit in which Mary Scheer plays an old bimbo whose chain-smoking causes cancer in everyone around her.

But despite shortcomings, the presence of Mad TV has made the battle for late night livelier than anyone might have anticipated. Nearly each week Fox and NBC issue press releases pointing to a triumph in one ratings category or another, and Mad's impressive performance has shown that SNL's supremacy may not be tenable any longer. Night Stand, a syndicated faux talk show, has acquired a small but devoted following since it made its debut in late night last fall. In it Tim Stack (who describes Night Stand as "Must Find TV") assumes the role of indulgent talk-show host Dick Dietrick, a master of the lame double entendre. Fox, meanwhile, is covering its bases in case Mad TV loses its momentum. This spring it will air a variety show, to be produced by Roseanne, that will alternate with Mad. A second project, from screenwriter Steve Kerper, is, according to Lauren Corrao, a development executive at Fox, "a comedy show so original in its concept it cannot be described." (Hmmmm.) But save for UPN, which is considering, among other things, an adult game show or soap opera to go up against SNL, none of the other networks have immediate plans to challenge it. "It's a little amazing,'' notes UPN entertainment president Michael Sullivan, "that no one has really tried to counterprogram SNL all these years." Especially considering that the overall late-night weekend audience has been growing steadily.

SNL's creator, Michaels, remains confident that he will win any present or future ratings fight. "The more people who will be watching late-night TV, the more people who will be watching us," he says, sounding like an abandoned NBC ad campaign. He professes to be unconcerned that the buzz surrounding his show is at the moment dangerously quiet. "We will prevail. As more and more people connect to the new cast members, more and more people will be talking about us." Or, as ostensibly patient NBC entertainment chief Don Ohlmeyer reminded reporters in a speech last month, the show "is a work in progress."

So far, the cast has shown itself to be quite able. There are a number of talented impressionists in the group, including Tim Meadows, who can juggle O.J. and Michael Jackson with a skilled facility. Another high point of the season has been Molly Shannon's disturbed Catholic schoolgirl. As she jumps unprovoked into midair and falls into people and folding chairs, Shannon has proved to be a first-rate physical comic.

What still plagues SNL this year is a penchant for sketches that don't seem to have any point. The show's new, unexplainable fixation is with characters who yell at faceless crowds. One has Cheri Oteri in a housecoat screaming at children from her front porch. The skit is too redolent of a scene from Vicki Lawrence's Mama's Family to watch comfortably in its entirety.

Its genuinely unbearable past seasons have worked to SNL's advantage--as well as Mad TV's--in the sense that our expectations for sketch comedy have diminished. "People are happy if they get one or two funny skits in a whole show," notes Fox's Corrao. Disconcerting words from a TV executive. But at the same time, it should be understood that sketch comedy has become increasingly difficult to produce. What does it mean to produce alternative comedy when mainstream pop culture has become so self-mocking? When Miller Lite commercials do smart send-ups of kung fu movies, when sitcoms like Ned and Stacey make jokes about sitcoms like Mr. Belvedere, when From Dusk Till Dawn wears its crumminess as a badge of honor? Moreover, there is the difficulty of producing intelligent satire in a world in which reality at times resembles a series of lame celebrity-sketch conceits--Sonny Bono in Congress, O.J. Simpson peddling testimony on video that he never gave in court. Lorne Michaels had better hope his viewers never discover CNN.

--With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/LosAngeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by JEFFREY RESSNER/LOSANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK