Comedy Central cuts all the musical performances from Saturday Night Live for broadcast in South Africa to bring episodes to viewers quicker.

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Comedy Central (DStv 122) is cutting out all of the musical performances by high-profile American music stars from all episodes of Saturday Night Live (SNL) shown in South Africa and Africa in order to show episodes of the comedy sketch show quicker, and close to the American broadcasting date.

Viewers of Saturday Night Live are wondering why they're seeing the high-profile music stars in episodes of SNL but no longer any of the music or the actual performances since the show switched from M-Net Series (DStv 114) to Comedy Central.

Episodes of SNL are actually being cut and re-edited for broadcast in South Africa and Africa on MultiChoice's DStv and the music performances deleted because the actual music rights for that can't be cleared in time.

Leaving the music in and waiting for the work to be done to clear the rights, would require episodes to be shelved for longer before Viacom International Media Networks Africa (VIMN Africa) which programmes Comedy Central's schedule, can broadcast SNL episodes.

Having to choose between bringing viewers the comedy to Comedy Central and quickly, or the comedy and the music but then later, VIMN Africa opted for the comedy and quicker leaving the music on the cutting-room floor.

"Comedy Central tries to air each episode of SNL as close as possible to its transmission date in the USA - normally one week after the American premiere," VIMN Africa tells me.

"Unfortunately this means that we are obliged to edit out the musical performances. These elements can take up to three months to get legal clearance."

"We've weighed up the options and on balance we prefer to let audiences enjoy the programming as close as possible to the US airdate."

"We are sorry if viewers miss the music performances as a result, but we feel that our audiences would rather have their SNL as fresh as possible," says VIMN Africa.

BREAKING. Saturday Night Live moves from M-Net Series to Comedy Central; comedy sketch show will start in April one week behind America.

Here's a blindsider: Comedy Central (DStv 122) has grabbed the exclusive broadcasting rights for the latest new season of Saturday Night Live (SNL) away from M-Net Series (DStv 110) which planned to start showing it from 3 March.

Comedy Central will show brand-new one week old Saturdany Night Live episodes on Saturdays from 7 April at 22:15 (South African time), as well as Best of Saturday Night Live classic episodes on Friday nights at 22:15 from Friday 6 April.

Earlier this month I told you RIGHT HERE that M-Net Series planned to start the new season of SNL on 3 March at 22:30 after M-Net Series managed to catch-up remarkably with the American sketch-comedy show over the past two years bringing episodes and seasons very close to the American broadcasting date.

Well, it would appear as if M-Net Series' plans for the new season has been foiled and that it will definitely not start in March but only later in the year. It might even be that SNL is completely gone and lost to M-Net Series permanently as a TV property since M-Net refuses hand-me downs and simply don't broadcast shows if it's been on another channel first.

''Comedy Central has secured the rights to Saturday Night Live in Africa and will now be broadcasting the world's most popular late night show,'' MTV Networks Africa says which specifies it as the very latest new season of SNL. ''Most importantly we get the episode only one week after the US premiere!''

Since there's zero chance that M-Net Series has Saturday Night Live's latest season starting in March and Comedy Central having the latest season start just one month later, it means SNL is lost to M-Net Series.

M-Net Series didn't have a definitive answer on what happened. I asked M-Net Series, MTV Networks Africa and MultiChoice for further clarification of exactly what happened so that I can understand. M-Net Series which told me  ''we may only air Saturday Night Live later this year'' promised ''feedback before the end of today'' but nothing materialized.