How TV REALLY Gets Made These Days: ‘The Dudleys’ On ‘SNL’

You can’t work in TV (or our business of covering the business of TV) without feeling a cringe of recognition in this terrific bit from Saturday Night Live about the faux show The Dudleys, and the contortions a network goes through to deal with audience input on how a show should be “fixed.”

Guest host Woody Harrelson and an “evolving” cast of The Dudleys slyly demonstrate what it’s really like to make a show in an era when social-media commentators and that wacky throwback, good old fashioned snail mail, let audiences convey exactly what they want changed, now, or when those snail mail letters eventually show up, want changed back, also now.

Let us know what you think about this one. It’s pretty well nailed the reality of TV creation these days (and writing about the results; Deadline gets plenty of (always welcome) commentary on the work of the networks, and our work too).