[Ads-l] (not) ready for prime time

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

OED has an entry for the U.S. colloquial phrase: not ready for prime time.
As Jesse states, the entry mentions a 1975 date for The Not Ready For
Prime Time Players comedy troupe who performed on Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live was a prime-time TV show; hence, this use of "Not
Ready For Prime Time" was arguably literal and not figurative although
it was intended to be comical.

Here is a literal use of the phrase "not ready for prime-time
television" in 1974.

Date: 1974
Book Title: Like it is
Author: Howard Cosell
Publisher: Playboy Press, Chicago, Illinois
Quote Page 19
Database: Internet Archive

[Begin excerpt]
When he left, Roone and I agreed that visually, Butkus, with his
battle-scarred appearance and his gargantuan body, would bring a
special flavor to the show, but that it would stop there. Verbally, we
agreed, he was not ready for prime-time television.
[End excerpt]

Here is a literal negative use of "ready for prime time" in October
1974. It fits the OED sense of "not quite having the qualities to be a
success" because the audience is too small.

Date: October 10, 1974
Periodical: Rolling Stone
Article: Rock on TV: The More Things Change
Author: Ben Fong-Torres
Publisher: Straight Arrow Publishers, San Francisco, California
Quote Page 21 and 22
Database: Internet Archive

[Begin excerpt]
Said Sugarman, who's done prime-time TV (including the 1971 and 1972
Grammy Awards shows), "I don't believe rock is ready for prime time.
Fourteen million viewers are needed to keep a show. And young people
are not available in those numbers.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 12:47 PM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry, I should have actually looked at the OED entry, which acknowledges this in the etymology at sense level.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2025 at 12:44:59PM -0400, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> > The first episode of Saturday Night Live, on 11 October 1975, credited the cast onscreen as "The Not for Ready Prime-Time Players!".
> >
> > It doesn't look like there's a (free) clip of this online, but there's a full transcript here:
> >
> > https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/October_11,_1975/Transcript
> >
> > Jesse Sheidlower
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 03, 2025 at 12:32:17PM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > > OED: 1977
> > >
> > > 1976 _Los Angeles Herald-Examiner_ (Apr. 24) A-3 [GenealogyBank]: READY FOR
> > > PRIME TIME Super Marathoners...warm up...prior to cross-country run.
> > >
> > > 1976 _Columbus [O.] Dispatch_ (Sept. 19) D-9 [GenealogyBank]: NOT READY FOR
> > > PRIME TIME...One citizen in the audience...urged the council to ask for a
> > > portable color television camera for a community access channel. But
> > > Council Chairman John Coleman was unimpressed.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > --
> > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org