SNL ‘Special Christmas Box’ Video

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Thursday, December 21, 2006

Saturday Night Live’s sensation created by the racy Justin Timberlake video, “Special Treat,” bleeped on air and then released uncensored on the Internet was well orchestrated.

The nearly three-minute digital film, shown on “Saturday Night Live” last Saturday, was a parody of two boy-band singers (including one played by the real Justin Timberlake) crooning a holiday song about making a gift to their girlfriends of their male anatomy, which they appeared to have wrapped in boxes (strategically placed) and then topped with bows.

Given the subject matter, it was little surprise that NBC bleeped a recurring word in the chorus 16 times. But soon after the broadcast concluded at 1 a.m. Sunday, viewers who’d seen the bit on TV (and others who had just heard about it) could find the uncensored version online. That’s because the network itself had placed it on its own Web site (nbc.com) and YouTube.com, under the headings “Special Treat in a Box” or “Special Christmas Box.”

In less than a week the official uncensored version of the video has been viewed by over two million people on YouTube alone. In the process “Saturday Night Live” appears to have become the first scripted comedy on a broadcast network to use the Web to make an end-run around the prying eyes of both its internal censors and those of the Federal Communications Commission, whose jurisdiction over “Saturday Night Live” effectively ends at the Web frontier.

Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live,” cautioned in an interview that the strategy of treating Internet users to the equivalent of an authorized “director’s cut” of his late-night show “will be the exception” going forward. But he also predicted that other shows and networks, time and money permitting, would surely follow NBC’s lead in making available material that was deemed not ready for prime time, or even late night. “My sense is that, as always, now that the door has been opened, some things will go through it,” he said.

For “Saturday Night Live” the ubiquity of “Special Treat” on the Web this week has proved to be yet another digital stake planted firmly in unexplored ground. Almost a year ago a rap parody from the show (featuring two characters waxing rhapsodic about eating cupcakes and watching “The Chronicles of Narnia” on the Upper West Side) became one of the first bootleg videos to demonstrate the vast potential of YouTube, the portal through which millions of viewers were able to see it. (While NBC quickly ordered YouTube to take down the video, which was titled “Lazy Sunday” and protected by copyright, the network later reached agreement with the Web site to showcase copyrighted material from its shows, including “The Office” and “Saturday Night Live,” on a dedicated page stocked by the network itself.)

The SNL gang was a little slow on the uptake at first but has been very smart about making sure that the video from their sketches gets released on the Web. Hosting it on their own servers is the right way to monetize it.

Here’s the YouTube version of the video, while it lasts: