Saturday Night Live (season 7)
The seventh season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 3, 1981, and May 22, 1982.
Following the dismissal of producer Jean Doumanian and most of her cast members (repertory players Gilbert Gottfried, Ann Risley, and Charles Rocket and feature players Yvonne Hudson, Patrick Weathers, and Matthew Laurance), the show was shut down because of the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike.
Dick Ebersol, the program's developer, was hired as Doumanian's replacement. The new cast of Saturday Night Live for this season were the same ones from the episode Ebersol produced for April 11, 1981: Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky and Tony Rosato along with the Doumanian era's sole survivors Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius were fired following the April 1981 episode while Laurie Metcalf and unseen cast member Emily Prager were not asked back as cast members. Ebersol then hired two new cast members, Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole, to fill the gap left by Metcalf and Prager.
