You Have Lorne Michaels to Thank for NBC’s Adele Lovefest

Saturday Night Live - Season 41
NBC was truly blessed. Photo: Dana Edelson/NBC

Adele has reached the stage in her career where she could’ve released 25 without ever leaving her London mansion and probably still sold the 4 million-and-counting albums she already has. But Adele’s a fan of the traditional album-release cycle (“[Streaming] probably is the future, but, eh,†she told Rolling Stone), so she did a whirlwind of TV appearances in New York City over the course of a week. Did you happen to notice that they were all for NBC? That was the genius of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, who procured a residency of sorts for Adele on NBC. The Hollywood Reporter reports that because SNL gave Adele her big break in the U.S. in 2008, Michaels was able to convince Adele over dinner this summer to give her first TV performance in America for 25 on SNL. From that sprung a seemingly exclusive TV deal between NBC and Adele that has involved appearances on the Today show, The Tonight Show, and a concert special filmed at Radio City Music Hall that airs December 14. Really, the only way Adele could’ve been more visible on NBC over the last two weeks was if she crashed their broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and got her own red swivel chair on The Voice. But don’t think Lorne didn’t ask!

Lorne Michaels Got NBC All Its Adele Coverage