Whether in the explicit pronouncements of pop culture commentators or in a cursory cruise of off-network, late-night television, there is ample evidence that young men remain both the primary producers and targeted consumers of much mainstream comedic content.  In the two years since the above-mentioned pieces, however, a number of incidents have invigorated offscreen debate about comedy and gender: among them, David Letterman firing his booker for sexist practices and remarks; Daniel Tosh shouting down a female heckler with a rape joke; Seth MacFarlane’s embarrassing song-and-dance at the 2013 Oscars; Jerry Seinfeld’s curiously tone-deaf take on diversity in comedy; and, perhaps most notoriously, Saturday Night Live’s clumsily PR-controlled search for and eventual hiring of African-American female cast member Sasheer Zamata.

Although it may be optimistic to suggest a correlation between those conversations and the recent programming decisions of comedy outlets, such dialogue does affect the discursive context in which we watch and talk about their shows.  In this light, the seemingly necessary belongingness between men and comedy dissipates a bit when considering the representational politics of Comedy Central’s spring lineup–namely, Kroll Show, Broad City, and the soon-to-return Inside Amy Schumer.  It isn’t just that comediennes star and/or figure prominently in the programs’ sketchy stories, something into which the network has put perfunctory effort in the past with The Sarah Silverman Program and Strangers with Candy.  Discourses of gender and sexuality additionally provide a generative grammar for the shows, imbuing their comedic portrayals of race, class, and homosocial bonding with the kind of polysemy customarily ascribed to Comedy Central’s much-lauded news satires.

The most simultaneously silly and insightful segment of Inside Amy Schumer’s first season, for instance, was a recurring bit called “Amy Goes Deep” which had the host interviewing, among others, a well-endowed man and a female dominatrix.  To be sure, the segments (like most sketches on Inside) use sexuality as a way to provoke and titillate viewers initially.  As the interviews progress, however, Schumer refrains from the sort of moralizing too-often implicit in portrayals of sexual taboos and instead gestures toward broader discourses about the ways in which we talk about those taboos.

Although nominally starring a male comedian and trafficking in the gendered caricatures so common among male-targeted comedies, Kroll Show is actually a “full-frontal assault on dude culture and the ideologies that support it, but in dickfest drag.”  It’s also the most cuttingly satirical sketch comedy show about television since Mr. Show.  Kroll’s favorite targets are the vapid fame-mongers, low-rent aesthetics, and crass commercialism of reality television.  Instead of merely reproducing and displaying televisual conventions with the lazy referentiality of an after-“Update” SNL-segment, though, recurring sketches like “PubLIZity” and “Rich Dicks” consistently ask viewers to consider the cultural and industrial discourses that construct and make commonsensical certain gendered representations of reality.

Of course, there exists real danger in the potential that viewers will decode the superficially heterosexist humor in these programs with the same unblinking acceptance as they do a show like Tosh.0.  It certainly doesn’t help, either, that Comedy Central has a tired habit of promoting its shows with the most memorable, “I’m Rick James, bitch!”-iest of sound bites.  Nevertheless, the infinitely mutable nature of comedy (and of the media infrastructures increasingly invested in it) means that no matter how loudly any one voice shouts, there are always plenty of hecklers.

To be sure, Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney are not (all?) “Gangnam Style”-irrelevant over a year later, but few could have predicted how much more turbulent the new 2013 season would be for the show. In addition to the above-mentioned, gone are reliable everymen Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Jason Sudeikis. And when “Weekend Update” co-anchor Seth Meyers takes over Late Night early next year, as Splitsider notes, the remaining cast members will all have been born after SNL’s halcyon premiere year of 1975.

But you know the old saying: the more things change, the more they ObamacareshutdownDrunkUncleMileytwerk. Few television shows are as simultaneously resistant to and reliant upon rapid changes in casting, news cycles, and zeitgeists as Saturday Night Live, an ontological ebb and flow that owes largely to its liveness.  The first two episodes of the show’s new season capture this dynamic perfectly.

The season premiere began with a cold open addressing the political theme of the week, a routine the program began at roughly the same time Jon Stewart proved the demographic utility of mixing comedy and news.  Host Tina Fey’s subsequent monologue lightly hazed the five new cast members in order to set up that most SNL-iest of sketches, the gameshow whose premise wears thin right after its title card.  “New Cast Member or Arcade Fire?,” however, seemed less about further embarrassing freshmen cast members than it was about reminding them (and viewers) of the show’s proud place in the American television heritage.

If SNL’s season premiere re-asserted its right to self-importantly navel gaze, last week’s Miley Cyrus-hosted follow up found the show manically reaching outside its comfort zone for relevance.  With more familiar faces behind the impersonations, sketches like the “50 Shades of Grey Auditions” or the Piers Morgan Live parody might have felt a little less slapdash. Instead, the episode struggled to turn its instantly dated cultural references into a proper showcase for both the veteran and new performers.

Certainly, given the dearth of competition at the timeslot combined with the growing size of its cultural footprint, SNL isn’t going anywhere despite a pretty forgettable start to the season.  What is clear from the early returns, though, is that this season marks one of those once-a-decade changings of the guard.  The show will additionally have to find an original way to engage with digital media culture, and it cannot continue to ignore its absurdly high quotient of white dude-ness.  Yet for all these changes, SNL will return this weekend, putting forth an effort very different from, and yet somehow fundamentally similar to, what it has offered for almost 40 years.  Doing so–even in today’s time-shifted, cross-platform, demo-obsessed media milieu–continues to make it a key case for understanding American television culture.

Founded in 1986, QVC (which stands for Quality, Value, Convenience), broadcasts live 24 hours a day, 364 days a year (every day except Christmas). According to the official website, QVC reaches 96% of American cable homes, and more than 166 million homes worldwide.

Home shopping channels have always been big moneymakers, and QVC claims to be the biggest of them all, beating out competitors like HSN, ShopNBC, and that weird knife channel. In 2008, USA Today reported that QVC “revenue rose 5% in 2007 to $7.4 billion” from 2006, with an “average yearly growth from 2001 through 2006 of 12.3%.” Having long held prime real estate on the TV dial (USA Today reports 80% below channel 35), millions of viewers pass through the QVC lineup every day, which allows them to sell thousands (approximately 1150 unique items per week) of competitively-priced products quickly and widely. The channel claims its record sales day to be December 2, 2001, with over $80 million in orders taken.

Although present in virtually all American homes, most of their sales (95%) come from repeat customers–approximately 1.8 million viewers. Independent research firm BIGresearch counts the average viewer age at 53, and QVC would prefer for it to be lower. By offering new product lines developed by celebrities (Heidi Klum, Ellen Degeneres, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Whoopi Goldberg, to name a few), famous designers (Bob Mackie, Kathy VanZeeland, Tacori, Isaac Mizrahi, and Project Runway winner Chloe Dao, for example), and well known beauty industry insiders (Bare Escentuals, Philosophy, Laura Geller, Wen, and Ojon, among others), the channel is clearly attempting to develop a younger audience base. And whether young or old, the audience is predominantly female (to the extent that hosts often refer to the home audience as “ladies” and suggest that viewers buy items “for your husband”) and that these women are either stay-at-home or work-from-home moms, housewives, or retirees.

This recognition of the typical QVC viewer (and customer, remember) and also the channel’s liveness lead to a very interesting interaction between hosts and audiences. The format of QVC programming is very collegial, warm and interactive. Hosts use direct address and look directly into cameras (and ostensibly to each viewer, personally). They discuss what home viewers may or may not be doing at a given moment (“Take a break from those chores, because you won’t want to miss a moment of this hour!”). They mention things that are happening live (the recent snowstorms in Pennsylvania hit the QVC headquarters, so they offered live exterior shots of the campus and suggested viewers experiencing the storm “Stay inside and shop with us!”). They take countless phone calls from viewers, who express satisfaction with the featured product or their excitement over ordering it. This friendly and surprisingly intimate set-up leads audience members to express familiarity with the channel and its hosts, saying, “You keep me company all day!” or “I’ve watched you for 20 years!” I’ve even witnessed one caller telling host Leah Williams, “When you talk to me, it’s like my best friend is talking to me.”

And it is, perhaps, this element of QVC viewership that means the most to me, as a fan. That I have gotten to know the hosts, the rhythms of the channel, the regular guests (designers, representatives), and that what I’m watching is being watched at that moment, live, with others around the country. Yes, there are some bizarre items, some amusing bloopers, some ridiculous gimmicks (David Venable’s famous “Yum!” face is at 1:30), and lots of folksy cheer. But it’s the channel’s embrace of these elements that makes it difficult for insiders to mock. There’s certainly more to QVC than meets the eye, and the channel represents a really fascinating segment of television that most scholars simply aren’t watching.