How the CBC blew its chance to create Saturday Night Live

...HOLLYWOOD credits made Michaels and Pomerantz a commodity to the very network that had let them go. By 1968, Ottawa was implementing an official broadcasting policy that required a high percentage of homegrown television programming. Suddenly there was a great need for seasoned pros who could create original content in Toronto. A critic noted in Variety that the country’s comedy was “a field for which the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has allowed to shipwreck and sag to abysmal depths.” The CBC began courting Canadians in Hollywood. In order to tempt them back from sunny California, expats were offered unprecedented creative control. “I got a call from the head of the CBC asking what it would take,” Michaels says...