An Oral History of MADtv, the Sketch Show That Never Quite Changed Comed

http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/oral-history-madtv.html

MADtv first came to life when Salzman and music mogul Quincy Jones, whose joint production company (QDE) was behind The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, bought the rights to the then-43-year-old Mad Magazine — one of the earliest pop-culture parody machines in modern America. It debuted on October 14, 1995, airing on Fox at 11 p.m. on Saturday nights, directly across the dial, and country, from Saturday Night Live, which was at the time suffering one of its worst-ever slumps. (That March, New York Magazine published the lengthy, excoriating feature “Comedy Isn’t Funny: Saturday Night Live at twenty—how the show that transformed TV became a grim joke.”)

MADtv had a long and complicated history at Fox, which increasingly neglected the series in terms of both marketing and budget, and it never escaped the shadow of SNL. But during its 14-year tenure on the air it was a home to talent from celebrated sketch series like The Ben Stiller Show, Kids in the Hall, SCTV, and In Living Color, and it helped kickstart the careers of several big fish in today’s comedy pond — from Patton Oswalt to Key & Peele. Here, then, is a brief look back at the cult sketch show that died but refused to stay dead.