Almost Live! began its run in 1984 as a talk and comedy show airing on Sunday nights and hosted by Ross Shafer. By 1988, John Keister had taken over as host as the program was re-vamped into a sketch comedy series.
With the switch to sketch comedy, the show was moved to 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, preceding Saturday Night Live.
There were many recurring sketches that became synonymous not only with the show, but with the Pacific Northwest. They included Mind your Manners with Billy Quan, The High Five'n White Guys, and spoofs of the hit show Cops, which focused on different communities in and around Seattle.
Twenty years ago, an April Fool's stunt in the form of a live news report that the Space Needle had collapsed caused a panic in Washington state. WATCH
Almost Live! caught the attention of Comedy Central in the early 1990s. The cast taped 65 special episodes for the cable channel in the summer of 1992.
Almost Live! also helped launch the careers of Bill Nye The Science Guy and Joel McHale. Nye was an engineer at Boeing who had a knack for comedy when he was added as a regular to the show. Joel McHale was a cast member in the show's latter years. He went on to host E!'s Talk Soup and became a cast member on the NBC sitcom Community.
Actor/writer was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe in 2014 for Best Screenplay for the movie "Nebraska."
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