Almost Live!

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 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.

John Keister and a change in format

John Keister became the permanent replacement after Shafer left the program. Keister hosted for one season (1988) in the one hour, 6 p.m. Sunday slot, but, following the lead of a "Greatest Hits" special that aired at 11:30 Saturday, the show moved into that slot. Until he became host, Keister was a regular supporting performer. Many of the initial award winning elements of Almost Live were his efforts, so the program quickly changed formats to feature more of his abilities, as well as other cast members, in video sketches. The guest interviews and live band segments were dropped. The focus changed to sketch comedy and the show was shaved back to a half-hour format.

The format of the show during Keister's tenure as host always included an opening monologue. Much of the material had a local flavor to it. In addition to Seattle politicians and celebrities, regular targets of the show’s barbs were various Seattle sports teams, local stereotypes, Seattle neighborhoods such as Ballard (home of elderly Scandinavian Americans who parked their cars halfway onto sidewalks with the seat belts slammed in the doors), Fremont and Wallingford (home of middle-aged hippies and New Agers), and suburbs such as Renton, Kent (perceived by the show’s young, urban viewers as a low-income, white trash town) as well as Bellevue and Mercer Island (both of which have an upscale, snobby image). Other targets outside of Seattle proper included Olympia and Bellingham, both of which have hippie/pothead stereotypes. Most, but not all, of the local references were removed for the Comedy Central version. The show also had promos for fake TV shows billed as "new shows on NBC for the upcoming season".

Besides Keister, regular cast members included Mike Neun, Pat Cashman, Tracey Conway, Nancy Guppy, Joe Guppy, Barb Klansnic, Joel McHale, Bob Nelson, Bill Nye, Bill Stainton, Andrea Stein, Lauren Weedman, Steve Wilson, Ed Wyatt and, Darrell Suto as Billy Quan. Writers included Scott Schaefer, who later went on to win three National Emmy Awards for writing on Bill Nye the Science Guy, and original Head Writer Jim Sharp, who is now Senior Vice President of Original Programming and Development for Comedy Central in Los Angeles. Later seasons occasionally featured Seattle-area comedian and voice actor David Scully who joined the core cast during the final season.

Cancellation

Almost Live! was canceled by KING-TV in 1999 because it was not making enough profit for Dallas-based Belo Corporation, which acquired the station's owner King Broadcasting Company two years earlier. As of June 2015, KING-TV (now owned by Tegna) has aired reruns of the show in the time slot following Up Late nw. In fall 2000, Keister created a new sketch comedy show for competing station KIRO-TV, titled The John Report with Bob, essentially a carry-over of the news report segment he had done on Almost Live!, with Bob Nelson in tow. The new show was canceled after 2 seasons, again because it was not making a profit.

KING aired a reunion show on September 12, 2005, featuring the cast of the final ten years. KING-TV also aired "Almost Live! Back At Ya", a series of "best of" shows, on Sundays starting September 10, 2006 at 9 p.m. The "best of" shows currently air Saturday nights at 2 a.m. on KING-TV's sister station, KONG-TV. Reruns of normal shows are broadcast on KING-TV in Seattle at 1:35 a.m., following Up Late NW.

Sequel

In July 2012, clips surfaced on YouTube that appeared to promote a sketch comedy show called The (206), referring to Seattle's area code. These clips featured John Keister and Pat Cashman and hinted strongly that the show would be a successor to Almost Live!. Subsequently, The Seattle Times published a blog article about the sequel which included behind-the-scenes glimpses at one of the sketches being filmed for the new show. Additionally, the new show has a presence on social networking Web sites such as Facebook. The show premiered on Sunday, January 6, 2013 on KING-TV after Saturday Night Live. The show would be revamped as Up Late NW (pronounced Up Late Northwest) in September 2015.

Segments

Some of the recurring segments featured on Almost Live! included:

Some sketches were borrowed for the Fox TV series Haywire, in 1990.