While a nice homage to this great show, the presenter is wrong when she said (multiple times) that the DVDs released several years ago simple cut up episodes and pasted them together. In fact all 39 NBC 90 minute episodes were released virtually intact in the Shout Factory sets in 4 volumes. The only other set they released was a selection of 15 of the syndicated shows from seasons 2 and 3, again, mostly intact. The are all still available for those who need an SCTV fix. It would be great if an SCTV channel would appear one day on Pluto or Tubi, but because of the music rights issue, that seems a faint hope.

regional comedy groups are cool: like the Groundlings (an improv/sketch comedy theater: which is based in Los Angeles, California); SCTV (Second City Television: the one that is based in Chicago, ILLinois) deserves to have its flowers. Who remembers: the Kids In the Hall or the Tom Green Show ?!?

Thanks for the solid overview of a (Canadian) TV classic! I think one of the most fascinating things about SCTV is how closely it's tied to an extremely early era of Canadian TV, with Global only starting (in southern ON) in 1974, just 2 years prior to SCTV's beginning. Part of the reason why SCTV could even exist in the first place is that it was on a fledgling network teetering on the edge of non-existence – they had to find a hit somewhere, and they were willing to let SCTV pull out all the stops in creating something truly unusual, at times weird, and eventually groundbreaking.

BTW, it's worth mentioning that one can find the episodes of the series uncut (though in low-res 480p versions) thanks to the efforts of fans and preservationists via torrents. It's certainly not legal, but when there is no legal way to pay for the show uncut in full, this is the only real alternative. It would be possible to run these episodes through upscaling software and get them up to something that approaches streamable quality – but it would be up to the fans to put the time + effort into doing something like that as clearly the rightsholders aren't about to.

You sound somewhat young, by your voice and your language. I grew up in NE Ohio, watching every SCTV episode right before the channels signed off and the Star Spangled Banner played with the flag waving. Way better than SNL at the time. Koo yoo koo koo, koo yoo koo koo! Fishin Musician, Ed Grimley, the Organ Emporium, Joey Hethington, etc. etc.

Both "Man who Would be King of the Popes" and the "Velveeva" spoof commercial made me laugh so much I could barely breathe. That's how good it was.

I love SCTV, so much that I have the Network 90 dvd box set(s) Volume 1-4 & SCTV: The Early Years, and of course Strange Brew…But the early CBC episodes are still unavailable, lamentably

Yeah… I thought I was crazy because I could NOT for the life of me, as a millennial, find episodes of this show to watch. I've seen clips, and as a sketch comedy fan and fan of Martin Short and John Candy and all the rest here it's wild this ISN'T on streaming or on some big fancy "Blu-Ray/DVD set". Do what they did with THE STATE – replace what needs to be replaced for the sake of releasing it in SOME capacity!

The easy solution is for them to do what they did with Daria and replace the music they can't get the rights too with sound a likes or generic similar music.
It's unfortunate MTV was too stupid to have home media figured out for the future even though the show had VHS releases of some episodes and some series even in the 90's you could get multiple VHS set for a single season.

Lucky for Daria there was a fan restoration project that used the DVD rips then readded the music.

I grew up in the 80s and LOVED SCTV and Fridays too. Great question about YTF every show isn't digitized. & I love "The Penthouse" for Canada, can't believe i nevr hrd that b4