Almost Live!

Almost Live! was a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Washington, USA, produced and broadcast by NBC affiliate KING-TV from 1984 to 1999. A re-packaged version of the show also aired on Comedy Central from 1992 to 1993, and episodes aired on WGRZ-TV and other Gannett-owned stations in the late 1990s. The show was broadcast in Seattle on Saturday nights at 11:30, pushing Saturday Night Live back to midnight, while other Gannett stations aired it after Saturday Night Live. History Original format Almost Live! began as a weekly half-hour talk and comedy sketch show created by then VP of Programming Bob Jones, and hosted by Ross Shafer and closely patterned after Late Night with David Letterman, airing at 6:00 p.m. on Sundays. From the beginning, it featured many spoofs and satires of local and national television, series such as Star Trek, and unique locales in and around the city such as Ballard, Green Lake, Lynnwood, and Kent. The show became so popular that it was expanded from a half hour to one hour and shown twice a week. After four years and nearly 40 local Emmy Awards and several national awards, Shafer left to host the Fox Network's The Late Show. As a follow-up to the local music program Rev which had John Keister as a frequent contributor, Almost Live! featured some of the earliest local musicians in the format that would later be called grunge.