Editing Weekend Update (section)

====Norm Macdonald (1994–1997)====
[[Norm Macdonald]], whom Chase called "the only other guy who did [the segment] funny,"<ref name="snlbackstage20110220">{{cite episode | series=Saturday Night Live Backstage | network=NBC | airdate=2011-02-20}}</ref> took over the role for Season 20. [[Al Franken]], whose history with ''SNL'' dated back to 1975, had been lobbying to replace Nealon as ''Weekend Update'' host. Accordingly, Franken left the show after losing the anchor spot.<ref>Shales, T: ''Live From New York,'' pages 433–444. Back Bay Books, 2003.</ref> Although Nealon no longer anchored ''Weekend Update,'' he still remained on the show until the end of Season 20. Macdonald would open each segment with "I'm Norm Macdonald, and now the fake news."

Running gags by Macdonald included punchlines involving [[Frank Stallone]] and Germans loving [[David Hasselhoff]]. In his last two seasons, he introduced another recurring gag where he would read a news story and then record a "note to self" on a tape recorder regarding the story he had just read. One of the most frequent guest correspondents during Macdonald's run was Joe Blow (played by [[Colin Quinn]]), a blue-collar guy who would rant about things that bother him. He would often make Macdonald uncomfortable and always ask when they were "gonna go for a beer together," to which Macdonald would always end up turning him down. His sign off was frequently "And that's the way it is", emulating [[Walter Cronkite]]'s famous sign-off phrase.

Another common topic of Macdonald's jokes was [[O. J. Simpson]] after [[O. J. Simpson murder case|his arrest and trial for murder]]. For example, he joked that "A down-and-out O. J. Simpson{{nbsp}}... has decided to go back to doing what he does best: killing people," and upon Simpson's acquittal he declared "well, it is finally official: murder is legal in the state of California." ''SNL'' writer [[Jim Downey (comedian)|Jim Downey]] recalled that "we did, like three solid years of, like, 60 shows of O.J. jokes in a row." Macdonald made his final appearance as ''Weekend Update'' anchor in December 1997, after NBC executive [[Don Ohlmeyer]]—a longtime friend of Simpson, who had previously told Michaels to not let his friendship affect the show—demanded Macdonald's dismissal from the segment, despite Michaels's protest that making the change in the middle of the season would be difficult for the show. Ohlmeyer told Macdonald that he was fired because he was not funny.{{r|snlbackstage20110220}}