Second City Television

Second City Television, commonly shortened to SCTV and later known as SCTV Network 90 (the NBC version) and SCTV Channel (the Cinemax version), is a Canadian television sketch comedy show about a fictional television station that ran intermittently between 1976 and 1984. It was created as an offshoot from Toronto's Second City troupe. It moved to American television, where it aired on NBC from 1981 to 1983.

The show's premise is the broadcast day of a fictitious TV station (later network) in the town of Melonville. Melonville's location is left unspecified; the earliest episodes imply it is in Canada, but most later episodes place it in the U.S.

A typical episode of SCTV presents a compendium of programming seen on the station throughout its broadcast day. A given episode could contain SCTV news broadcasts, sitcoms, dramas, movies, talk shows, children's shows, advertising send-ups hawking fictitious products, and game shows. Several "shows" are seen regularly on SCTV, including SCTV News; soap opera The Days of the Week; late-night movie features Monster Chiller Horror Theater and Dialing For Dollars; and Great White North (a public access show centered around two Canadian 'hosers'), among others. Many other SCTV shows are seen only once, such as the game show Shoot at the Stars, in which celebrities are literally shot at like shooting gallery targets, or full-blown movie spoofs such as Play It Again, Bob, in which Woody Allen (Rick Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) to star in his next film. Episodes also feature a range of SCTV-produced promotions (for imaginary future shows) and commercials, such as spots for "Al Peck's Used Fruit" or "Shower in a Briefcase", or a public service announcement that helpfully describes "Seven Signs You May Already Be Dead".

Also seen fairly frequently, particularly in later episodes, are behind-the-scenes plots focusing on life at the station/network. These often feature Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty), SCTV's cheap, tyrannical owner and president who, despite being perfectly ambulatory, uses a wheelchair to earn "respect" (i.e., sympathy) from employees and viewers. Also seen regularly are weaselly, sweating station manager Maurice "Moe" Green (Harold Ramis), succeeded in the position by flamboyant, leopard-skin clad, foul-mouthed Edith Prickley (Andrea Martin); vain variety star Johnny LaRue (John Candy); washed-up entertainers such as singer Lola Heatherton (Catherine O'Hara) and comedian Bobby Bittman (Eugene Levy); news anchors Floyd Robertson (Flaherty) and Earl Camembert (Levy), talk-show host Sammy Maudlin (Flaherty), cult-stardom-destined and beer-addled brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie (Moranis and Thomas), and many others.

The small cast, typically six to eight members at any given time, play a wide variety of other station roles ranging from program hosts to commercial spokespersons. They also impersonate numerous popular celebrities appearing on the station's programming.

There is much dispute as to who actually created the SCTV series. The show itself bears no "created by" credit, although it gives "developed by" credits to Bernard Sahlins and Andrew Alexander.

In 1974, Andrew Alexander bought the Canadian rights to The Second City for one dollar, and in 1976, he was the producer of Toronto's stage show, and was looking to expand his company into TV. He called together the current cast of the stage show (including Candy, Flaherty, Thomas, and Levy) to discuss a format for a Second City TV series. Also in attendance at the meeting were Second City veterans Harold Ramis, Sheldon Patinkin, and Del Close, along with business partner Bernard Sahlins.

According to Dave Thomas's account in SCTV: Behind The Scenes, various ideas were batted around, then — and here is where meeting attendees remember things differently — either Close or Patinkin came up with the idea of presenting programming from the world's smallest TV station. The cast immediately jumped on the idea as a workable model for presenting a virtually unlimited range of characters, sketches, and ideas, while still having a central premise that tied everything together. From there, the actual content of the show (the characters, the situations, the Melonville setting, etc.) was all the work of the cast, with contributions from Alexander and Sahlins.