'Saturday Night Live' to run with fewer ads next season (report)

When "Saturday Night Live" starts its 42nd season next fall, it will presumably still have "Weekend Update," musical guests and lots of celebrity impressions. What it won't have is the same number of commercials it's had for its past 41 cycles on air.

NBC will structure the program so that it runs with two fewer commercial breaks, according to a report in Advertising Age – the equivalent of cutting about 30% of the ads from the show. The move is the latest in a series of efforts by big TV companies to try to change the way they rely on commercials for support. At a time when more viewers watch TV in new digital ways that contain fewer ads or commercials that are targeted to the person watching, TV networks are making attempts to emulate the experience.

An NBCU spokeswoman could not be reached for immediate comment.

Photos of the most successful 'SNL' cast members:

NBC will also, six times a year, give an advertiser the chance to create commercials that tie in to the program, according to the report.

The move sounds radical for the venerable program, but "Saturday Night Live" has experimented with these sorts of things in the past.

In 2009, "SNL" created three sketches based on a long-running spoof of "MacGyver" called "MacGruber" that were actually commercials for Pepsi and appeared in ad breaks supporting a January "SNL" broadcast (one of them showed up in NBC's broadcast a day later of Super Bowl XLIII). In that same year, "SNL" allowed Anheuser Busch InBev to purchase all the national ad time surrounding the program to hawk a brew called Bud Light Golden Wheat. In exchange, the beer-maker sponsored a series of never-before-aired comedy segments from the show's rehearsals during its commercial breaks.

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NBCU isn't alone is tilling this new ground. TNT expects to run three new dramas with a significantly reduced load of ads when they debut. TruTV, like TNT owned by Time Warner's Turner unit, intends to run fewer commercials and more programming starting later this year. Viacom's networks are trimming the number of ads they feature in primetime. And there is a spate of new offers to help blend ads with the TV outlet in which they surface. Fox Networks Group. A+E Networks and Viacom are all pushing new units that help advertisers tailor commercials to their particular products.