We mourn the decline of a comedy institution, and offer an experimental solution to salvage it for the Digital Age.

Each year, one of my favorite traditions is to watch the media’s excitement when Saturday Night Live picks its new cast members. They link to grainy footage of them on YouTube, shot at college talent shows and small nightclubs, where they demonstrate the four celebrity impersonations they’re going to wear into the ground over their televised careers. We hear how they’re all double-threats, because they’re also incredible writers. Then the actual season starts, we see them in action, and 9 out of 10 times, their contributions to the show totally suck.

I recently was over at a friend’s apartment and was surprised to find that he’d taped that week’s episode. Whether it was the twelve-pack each, or the suburban ennui, we said what the hell and decided to watch it. What followed was such a grim, humorless atrocity I could hardly believe it was televised under the label of entertainment; it was as ABC’s genial TGIF lineup had been preempted to show documentary footage of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The problem was the weakness of the writing. The episode I saw veered from the dull recitation of current events in what was billed as an impression but delivered in the actor’s natural voice, to the old favorite of combining two disparate pop cultural references and then stuffing them full of admittedly accurate but not particularly insightful celebrity impressions, to a fake news component that took an entire week to create yet was less funny than any given night of The Daily Show or Colbert Report. Hell, there were TWO fake game shows: it was lazy, lazy, lazy.

The cast and crew of SNL have always replied to criticism by citing the show’s rushed production schedule and comparative length. I think they bring a big part of that upon themselves, with the relentless focus on timeliness. Comedy of the moment can be great if it’s insightful and satirical and witty; however, in its current incarnation, it seems as if all SNL does is reenact current events. It’s not funny because Fred Armisen is impersonating the President and creating humor out of his foibles; now it’s funny because Fred Armisen is impersonating the President. Hey look! That guy’s acting like the President!

Speaking of lazy writing, it would be particularly meta to write an article solely criticizing SNL for laziness in its writing. But the fact is, I have a deep sentimental spot for SNL. At age 8, I would circumvent my early bedtime by watching the show’s eastern feed, when it had guys like Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, etc. When Comedy Central became a channel, I could catch the constant reruns of older incarnations, like the original cast, and the Eddie Murphy years. Growing up, it was a huge influence on my sense of humor (probably later diminished by the advent of The Simpsons, like so many in my age group, but still).

So I think I have a solution to save the show, at least on the writing front. Of the 10 sketches I saw that night, probably five including the Weekend Update were based on events that happened that week, meaning they had to be written, rewritten, memorized, and performed within that week.

Why not crowdsource the writing of time-sensitive sketches to the public, and focus the writers’ room’s energy on creating broader-themed sketches, which would better showcase their craft and also withstand the test of time? Now, I know how dubious and new-media-new-agey crowdsourcing the authorship of a beloved institution like SNL initially sounds; it’s basically like when a local theater troupe would come to your elementary school and act out the kids’ stories and poems, writ large on a major network.

But I think it could be really effective. Try this experiment: quickly skim the front page of the NY Times or whatever news source you read, and spend some time coming up with a joke. Make it a good joke; it should be better than something Jay Leno would say to truly prove the worth of this experiment. Now punch keywords from your joke into Twitter’s search engine. I’ve done this experiment 4 or 5 times myself, and every single time, I’ve found that someone was making my joke ahead of me.

NBC could totally set up onerous terms for submitting your sketch for consideration, there’d be no money or only token compensation involved, the writer would get their name shown at the end of the sketch, and I think it would revolutionize the show. In fact, I think it would motivate some serious effort from people competing with what they saw the week before, which would only make for better episodes.

I mean, how cool would it be to see your sketch acted out on Saturday Night Live? And, if nothing else, aren’t you curious as to which sketches did make the cut? If nothing else, they should test one episode this way. The fact is, it certainly couldn’t be worse than the one I saw, meaning they could save hundreds of thousands on the writers’ salaries (the episode in question from the other night credited 21 writers).

In closing, I’m feeling really good about my messianic role in saving a pop cultural landmark and dragging it by its cold, dead sense of humor into both the Digital Age and a new Golden Age of Comedy, but, as I reach the end of this article, I am starting to question my grandiose scheme for one important reason.

I googled “Crowdsourcing SNL” and nothing came up.