History Trivia / SCTV

* FakeAmerican: Although it's usually assumed that everyone in the cast was Canadian, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin and Harold Ramis were American, so whenever any of the others played Americans this trope applies. (Martin had been living and working in Canada for several years prior to SCTV, though.)

* CaliforniaDoubling: The show was made in Canada (Toronto for most of it, Edmonton in seasons 3 and 4), but they did a good job making it not too obvious in location shoots (except for oddities like downtown Edmonton being asked to double for Manhattan in ''Play it Again, Bob''[[note]]a Woody Allen movie parody[[/note]]), and of course the show averted CanadaDoesNotExist pretty hard with the [=McKenzies=] and other sketches.

* ExecutiveMeddling: The level of influence NBC tried to impose upon the show during its run on the American network is the stuff of legend.
** They sent executives up to Edmonton to provide input into the show's development (which the cast and crew often ignored because it was stupid), gave them minimal budgets for each episode, and aired the show at odd hours (how odd? Try 11:30pm on Sunday night, a deader timeslot than [[FridayNightDeathSlot Friday nights]]). It's a wonder the show survived, and even thrived, despite these setbacks.

** A few instances of ExecutiveMeddling in the creation of the NBC ''Network 90'' series worked out OK, such as the idea of "wraparounds," or thematic station-based storylines connecting the various sketches, and the inclusion of musical guests.
* FakeAmerican: Although it's usually assumed that everyone in the cast was Canadian, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin and Harold Ramis were American, so whenever any of the others played Americans this trope applies.

** Season 3. After the second season their Canadian network, Creator/GlobalTelevisionNetwork, dropped it because it was too expensive to produce. But syndicated reruns were getting good ratings in the US, so Second City didn't want to throw the towel in on the show just yet. They finally worked out a deal with Creator/{{CBC}}. The catch was that, due to a separate deal that happened, the show would have be taped at the studios of CITV (ironically now a Global station) in Edmonton, Alberta, which is over 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from their home base of Toronto. Catherine O'Hara and John Candy elected not to participate (Candy left to headline his own short-lived sketch show ''Big City Comedy''). Then they had to break-in three new cast members: Robin Duke, Rick Moranis, and Tony Rosato. And the CBC insisted that each episode feature two minutes of "identifiable Canadian" material (which led to the "Great White North" sketches). The situation was frustrating enough that Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin only worked part-time (shooting all their sketches over a matter of a few weeks; and Flaherty abruptly left towards the end of the season (but eventually returned after a few weeks). However, it all ended up working out: being away from home allowed the cast and writers to focus on their work, the newcomers (especially Moranis) rose to the occasion, and the Edmonton TV facility had much better production values than they'd worked with at Global. And the Canadian content mandate led to the creation of the show's most popular characters, Bob and Doug [=McKenzie=]. By the end of the year ''SCTV'' was getting better ratings than the infamous 6th season of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', and NBC was impressed enough to pick up the show. Nevertheless, SCTV moved production back to Toronto as soon as it was practical (midway through season 4), once they found better Toronto production facilities then they'd had at Global. They DID take some of the Edmonton crew back to Toronto with them, including director John Blanchard who the SCTV cast all felt was a major upgrade from their previous directors.

** Season 3. After the second season their Canadian network, Creator/GlobalTelevisionNetwork, dropped it because it was too expensive to produce. But syndicated reruns were getting good ratings in the US, so Second City didn't want to throw the towel in on the show just yet. They finally worked out a deal with Creator/{{CBC}}. The catch was that, due to a separate deal that happened, the show would have be taped at the studios of CITV (ironically now a Global station) in Edmonton, Alberta, which is over 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from their home base of Toronto. Catherine O'Hara and John Candy elected not to participate (Candy left to headline his own short-lived sketch show ''Big City Comedy''). Then they had to break-in three new cast members: Robin Duke, Rick Moranis, and Tony Rosato. And the CBC insisted that each episode feature two minutes of "identifiable Canadian" material (which led to the "Great White North" sketches). The situation was frustrating enough that Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin abruptly left midway through the season (but they eventually returned). However, it all ended up working out: being away from home allowed the cast and writers to focus on their work, the newcomers (especially Moranis) rose to the occasion, and the Edmonton TV facility had much better production values than they'd worked with at Global. And the Canadian content mandate led to the creation of the show's most popular characters, Bob and Doug [=McKenzie=]. By the end of the year ''SCTV'' was getting better ratings than the infamous 6th season of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', and NBC was impressed enough to pick up the show.