By Jacques Steinberg
Thursday, December 21, 2006
NEW YORK
The nearly three-minute digital film shown on "Saturday Night Live" last weekend was a parody of two boy-band singers — including one played by the real Justin Timberlake — crooning a holiday song about making a gift to their girlfriends of their male anatomy, which they appeared to have wrapped in strategically placed boxes and topped with bows.
Given the subject matter, it was not surprising that NBC bleeped a recurring word in the chorus 16 times.
But soon after the broadcast concluded at 1 a.m. Eastern time Sunday, viewers who had seen the skit on television, and others who had just heard about it, could find the uncensored version online.
That was because the network had placed it on its own Web site, nbc.com, and on YouTube.com, under the headings "Special Treat in a Box" or "Special Christmas Box."
In less than a week, the uncensored version of the video has been viewed by more than two million people on YouTube alone. In the process, "Saturday Night Live" appears to have become the first scripted comedy on a broadcast network to use the Web to make an end run around the prying eyes of both its internal censors and the Federal Communications Commission, whose jurisdiction over "Saturday Night Live" effectively ends at the Web frontier.
Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," warned during an interview that the strategy of treating Internet users to the equivalent of an authorized "director's cut" of his late-night show "will be the exception."
But he also predicted that other shows and networks, time and money permitting, would follow NBC's lead in making available material that has been deemed not ready for prime time, or even late night, on television.
"My sense is that, as always, now that the door has been opened, some things will go through it," he said.
For "Saturday Night Live," the ubiquity of "Special Treat" on the Web this week has proved to be yet another digital stake planted firmly in unexplored ground.
Almost a year ago, a rap parody from the show, featuring two characters waxing rhapsodic about eating cupcakes and watching "The Chronicles of Narnia" on New York's Upper West Side, became one of the first bootleg videos to demonstrate the vast potential of YouTube, the portal through which millions of viewers were able to see it.
Although NBC quickly ordered YouTube to take down that video, which was titled "Lazy Sunday" and protected by copyright, the network later reached agreement with the Web site to showcase copyrighted material from its shows, including "The Office" and "Saturday Night Live," on a dedicated page stocked by the network itself.
The common denominator in "Special Treat" and "Lazy Sunday" — as well as another "Saturday Night Live" favorite on You Tube featuring the actress Natalie Portman and her supposed bad- girl side — is a performer on the show, Andy Samberg, and a cast of producers he brought with him to "Saturday Night Live" from a pioneering Web site called Lonely Island.
The idea for "Special Treat" was hatched, Samberg said, when Michaels called him into his office last week and asked that he try to write something funny that would showcase the singing skills of Timberlake, who was both the host and musical guest.
Samberg and his colleagues — including Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — presented a rough draft of the song to Timberlake the following Thursday afternoon, and after they reworked it to his specifications, they recorded the voice track on special equipment in Samberg's office around midnight. They spent Friday and much of Saturday filming the video in and around New York.
It took until 4 p.m. Saturday — less than eight hours before the show was to go live — to make sure that the video was in sufficient shape to be shown to the NBC executive responsible for late- night programming, Rick Ludwin.
While the show's producers had already concluded on their own that the video would have to be bleeped to be broadcast, they had a special request for Ludwin: Would he permit the uncensored version to be made available on the Web?
"My first instinct, without having seen anything, was that we probably shouldn't do that," Ludwin said later in an interview. "My thought was that even though it's going on the Internet, it's still representing NBC. But I hadn't seen it yet. So I said it would depend on how dirty it was."
Drawing close to a monitor adjacent to the show's vaunted eighth-floor studio, Ludwin watched as Timberlake, in a blond wig, and Samberg, decked out with a close-cropped beard that made him look like the pop singer's twin brother, sang of the various holidays on which they wanted to present their special gift — including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa — and the various settings, including backstage at the Country Music Association Awards.
"We were all laughing," said Ludwin, who had been accompanied by a representative from the NBC legal department. Then, Ludwin said, he had a change of heart.
"Those people who go on the Internet will not be shocked by this," Ludwin recalled thinking. "Obviously there are some people who will be offended. Those people are probably unlikely to go searching for it on the Internet. It's just funny."
Still, the material was touchy enough, Ludwin said, that he sought final approval for the Web version of the video from the highest echelons of NBC, including Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment , and Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal Television Group. Both approved the idea, he said. Another executive suggested that a disclaimer be placed before the Web-only version of the video that warned of its explicit content, a proposal that was immediately accepted.
As yet another production featuring Samberg spread like electronic wildfire, the performer said that he was pleased that the show was becoming so adept at finding alternate routes to viewers, beyond the 6.5 million who, on average, watch the show on NBC each Saturday night, according to Nielsen Media Research, a figure that is down slightly since last year at this time.
"A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around," Samberg said.
"It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously. It's not our main objective. But there's no part of us that doesn't want to be on YouTube."
Seth Meyers, the show's head writer, said that he and Michaels were also mindful that sometimes the funniest material — whether on their show or others, like Howard Stern's radio show — came from butting up against boundaries, whether imposed or self-imposed.
Sizing up the two versions of the "Special Treat" video, Meyers observed, "The most interesting thing is that it's actually not funnier uncensored."
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