Saturday Night Live's 'Weekend Update' To Premiere as Standalone Series This Summer

It appears Saturday Night Liveis liberating a cornerstone segment. The iconic late-night show has announced that Colin Jost and Michael Chewill lead Weekend Update in a standalone primetime slot on NBC this summer.

According to Rolling Stone, the show will air four nights in 30-minute episodes. Breakout Update specials are not terribly rare; three arrived ahead of the 2008 election, three more the following year, but did not air anything ahead of the 2016 election. But this is the first time a full series of the news satire segment has been ordered. The announcement arrives as the show continues to see its best ratings in a generation, largely hinged to A-list appearances from Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy as the wildly incompetent Trump/Spicer duo.

Baldwin's impersonation will live forevermore in an upcoming satirical memoir, You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story Of My Fantastic First Year As President Donald J. Trump, arriving on November 7th.  Weekend Update will premiere on August 10th at 9pm.