Short answers, pulled from the story.
Saturday Night Live premiered on NBC on the 11th of October 1975 under the original title NBC's Saturday Night. Comedian George Carlin was the first host. The title was changed to Saturday Night Live at the start of the 1977-1978 season after NBC purchased the name rights from ABC.
Saturday Night Live was created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The project originated in 1974 when NBC president Herbert Schlosser asked Ebersol to fill a Saturday night programming gap left after Johnny Carson petitioned to have weekend Tonight Show reruns removed.
Saturday Night Live has won 113 Primetime Emmy Awards. As of September 2022 it holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy Award nominations of any television program, with 305 total nominations. The show has also won 6 Writers Guild of America Awards and 3 Peabody Awards.
Kenan Thompson is the show's longest-serving cast member, having joined in 2003. Jim Downey was the longest-tenured writer overall, writing for the show on and off for 30 years and formally retiring in 2013. Don Pardo served as announcer from the show's debut in 1975 until his death on the 18th of August 2014.
Saturday Night Live is filmed at Studio 8H, located on floors eight and nine of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The 2013-2014 season had a budget of over $70 million and received a $12.3 million subsidy from New York State. The studio was originally a converted radio studio that had housed NBC election night and Apollo moon landing broadcasts.
SNL has measurably influenced presidential elections through political satire. During the 2008 campaign, two-thirds of polled voters had seen politically charged SNL content and ten percent said it affected their vote. Chevy Chase's impression of Gerald Ford in 1976 was cited as an influence on that election, and Tina Fey's portrayal of Sarah Palin in 2008 drew fourteen million viewers, the show's largest audience in fourteen years.