Tina Fey to host first post-strike ‘SNL’ show

NEW YORK - NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” the only late-night show completely shelved by the writers strike, is planning a Feb. 23 return, and former head writer and co-anchor of “Weekend Update,” Tina Fey, is scheduled to host. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Actress Ellen Page, star of the Oscar-nominated film “Juno,” is set to host the show on March. 1. No musical guests have been announced yet.

How long has “Saturday Night Live” been gone? So long that it opened its second-to-last show before the strike with a skit about a Halloween party at presumed president-in-waiting Hillary Clinton’s house. The real Barack Obama made a cameo.

“It’s been a long dry spell without ‘Saturday Night Live’ on the air,” said Rick Ludwin, head of late-night entertainment at NBC, on Tuesday. “They’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching all this happening in politics and the primaries. ‘SNL’ thrives during an election year and they can’t wait to get back on.”

While the “Tonight” show and Conan O’Brien’s “Late Night” returned in January without writers and did shows with skeleton crews, “SNL” is so dependent on its writers that it couldn’t return without them.

The Associated Press and Access Hollywood contributed to this report.

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