Once upon a not very long time ago, Saturday Night Live had character — make that characters. Wayne and Garth, Hans and Franz, Linda Richman, Mary Katherine Gallagher, the sexually ambiguous Pat, Mango, the Cheerleaders. And so on. "It was the Yankees," remembers Chris Rock of a cast so stuffed with talent that the competition to get on air and create new comic icons and catchphrases was ferocious. (Eddie Murphy once advised Rock to create "Weekend Update" pieces delivered straight to the camera to help him break through. Which he did.) Anecdotes like these make the frankly funny and admirably frank Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation (May 6, 9 pm/ET, NBC) so much more than a nostalgic clip job. There's plenty that's celebratory in this two-hour special, but also much that's self-critical — especially in addressing the mid-'90s cast upheaval that led to falling ratings,
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CBS has announced "My Grammy Moment," an opportunity for unsigned recording artists to audition to perform with Justin Timberlake at the 49th-annual Grammy Awards, airing Feb. 11. Details and voting procedures can be found at the My Grammy Moment website.... CBS will launch in January CBS Records, a digital label that will sign artists and aim to promote them via iTunes, TV-show placements and the network's broadband channel.... Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records (springboard for the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones), died on Thursday, at age 83.
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