Two decades after its founding, YouTube is the second most popular website on the internet. It has become one of the biggest cable providers in The United States and has more of the streaming market than Netflix. It’s owned by Google. It has lucrative partnerships with many of the biggest companies in the world. It is a mainstream success by any definition, which is why it’s so nice to see YouTube still paying tribute to its weird roots and more specifically, the OG Andy Samberg SNL sketch that played a “seminal” role in its growth.
CEO Neal Mohan recently talked to The Hollywood Reporter as part of an extensive profile. During the conversation, the subject of late night television came up, and the longtime executive talked about how important it has been for the growth of the platform. Back in 2005, less than a year after YouTube first launched, someone uploaded a video of “Lazy Sunday.” The Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell sketch, an early Digital Short that celebrates eating cupcakes and going to the movies, was viewed more than five million times in just a few months before NBC Universal requested its removal.
How popular it got and NBC’s reaction created a lot of press for the new company, and within six months, it went from doing 8 million views a day to more than 100 million views a day. A few months later, the website was sold to Google for nearly two billion dollars, and it has been growing and getting more popular ever since. You can check out the Samberg and Parnell sketch below…
Now, exactly how much credit “Lazy Sunday” should get for YouTube’s rapid growth in popularity is debatable. Doing 8 million views a day less than a year after launching is obviously a sign that you’ve got a product people want. No doubt plenty of users heard about YouTube for the first time because of the SNL clip, but they would have likely got there eventually. Instead, “Lazy Sunday”’s biggest contribution is likely related to how it reframed the perception of the website, both internally and externally.
During the interview, Mohan called “Lazy Sunday” a “seminal moment” because it caused people to see the platform could be more than just uploading personal videos. It could instead be used as a tool for mainstream companies to get their content seen. Saturday Night Live now uploads nearly all its sketches right after they air to the platform and clearly sees it as a second route to generating views and revenue. Most other late night shows do the same thing, and YouTube is now filled with trailers, clips, sketches, full episodes and even live sporting events.
Here’s a portion of Mohan’s quote…
One of the really big [shifts] was Saturday Night Live and clips getting consumed not on Saturday night but on Sunday morning, when people would open up YouTube. In that sense, they were a pioneer in getting their content out to so many viewers.
Yeah, YouTube has done pretty well for itself since it launched twenty years ago, and then again, so has SNL. The long-running sketch comedy show has remained culturally relevant despite all the changes to how people consume TV, and its YouTube account features dozens and dozens of sketches that have been watched tens of millions of times.
"Lazy Sunday" has also remained popular and continues to inspire parody versions, some of which go viral themselves on YouTube.
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