VH1 to Run 19-Day SNL Marathon

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, VH1 Classic is planning to air a 19-day marathon of the sketch comedy show.

The marathon will consist of 433 hours worth of episodes and will be the longest marathon dedicated to a single series in television history. It will begin January 28th with season 39 and work back to season 1. It is set to conclude on February 15th with the show’s first ever episode, which was hosted by the late George Carlin and originally aired on October 11, 1975.

Not every episode of SNL will be broadcasted since some are too difficult to clear due to various issues, such as music rights.

“Not all the content is cleared. Music in particular is difficult to re-clear,” Ben Zurier, executive vice president of programming strategy for VH1, told Variety. “Somewhere along the line we will have episodes that will be missing a performance or a sketch or something like that, and there are others where we made editorial choices for what made sense for ourselves.”

There will also be some breaks from episodes of SNL as the channel will also be showing movies starring  former SNL members each Saturday night of the marathon, including MacGruber, Black Sheep, Trading Places, and Blues Brothers.

VH1 Classic is following the actions of FXX, which had a 12-day marathon of The Simpsons that consisted of 552 episodes. The marathon drew high ratings for the cable network.

NBC will also be celebrating the 40th anniversary of SNL with a three-hour special that will be shown February 15th.