Saturday Night Live is an old school institution dating back to the '70s. Not everything has changed in terms of the day to day happenings at the show, and Lorne Michaels has been producing the show since the beginning. Even as cast members cycle out, one thing SNL hasn’t altered at all is the use of handwritten cue cards instead of a teleprompter, something that's pretty unique in the digital age.
This likely won’t change, either, and SNL cast member Bowen Yang explained why. In a recent interview with Cosmopolitan , Yang chatted about why SNL operates in the old fashioned way that it does, including its insistence on using cue cards, a practice uncommon as technology has developed. However, the handwritten cards are actually more practical for SNL , especially with so many moving parts.
Yang explained: Sometimes on the floor, the power does go out of portable monitors. And then, no one knows what they're doing. So cue cards are always kind of foolproof that way.
Where it's like they can fit anywhere and they're not gonna like, go out. SNL is of course a live show, and limiting as many external factors that can lead to disaster is essential. If a teleprompter went off live on air, that could certainly ruin a broadcast, which isn’t something you’d want to risk when focusing on performing comedy.
One remembers Jimmy Fallon’s teleprompter breaking live while he hosted the Golden Globes in 2017, and how this could’ve been avoided if cue cards were used. Ironically, F.
