BUTV’s Terrier Tonight: BU’s Version of Saturday Night Live
Fiona Bright Holton and Ellie Tiwari perform the “Campus Celebrity Check-In“ segment of Terrier Tonight at a rehearsal in November. Bright is acting as a “Turkey Party of the USA Representative,” who is speaking on behalf of the turkeys on BU’s campus. Photos by Charlie Cohen (COM’29)
BUTV’s Terrier Tonight: BU’s Version of Saturday Night Live
Show features comedy sketches and recurring segments, many with a BU angle
Think of Terrier Tonight as BU’s answer to Saturday Night Live. This new live comedy show, airing on BUTV twice a semester, delivers recurring segments and offbeat sketches—like a stalker-esque job interview for a role at Facebook and a pitch-perfect soda commercial satire.
But some of its biggest laughs come from inside jokes only BU students can truly appreciate: like Campus Celebrity Check-In, with characters like “eduroam”—except it’s not actually eduroam, it’s the BU Guest (unencrypted) Wi-Fi network—and a BU tour guide training.
The show launched this fall, created by Lily Greenberg (COM’27) and Doran Steinfeld (COM’27, CFA’27). The pair came up with the idea more than a year ago and spent months turning it into a reality. Initially recorded live-to-tape, the 30-minute episodes are now transitioning to a fully live format.
“We hit the ground running,” Greenberg says. “We started working on it over the summer, and we got to put together this really awesome team of people, and it felt like we all really had the same vision for what we wanted for it.”
Producer Lola Duek (COM’26) says the team put out feelers at the beginning of last semester to gauge interest and quickly received an enthusiastic response. “A lot of people were interested,” Duek says. “People were really immediately dedicated to the show, which was awesome, because that was kind of [what we wanted.]
In addition to live sketches, the episodes feature what producer and director Miles Dakss (COM’28) calls “unscripted, goofy elements.” These pretaped bits air between live segments while the team switches sets. In the last episode, one of these was a segment reminiscent of the movie Freaky Friday, where Steinfeld and Dakss switched lives.
Students from all majors and years are welcome to join the show. Between 30 and 50 students are currently involved, serving as producers, writers, actors, camera operators, and tech crew.
“We’re really all over the map, which is just delightful,” Greenberg says, “and it’s cool for writing [because] you get a bunch of different perspectives from around campus. And really, we do want this to be for the student body.”
Greenberg says many of those working on the show are from the College of Communication—particularly students majoring in film and television and public relations—as well as from other colleges. The show has been experimenting and expanding to test its limits, she says, like inviting the a cappella group the Dear Abbeys to perform for the upcoming episode.
Greenberg describes the group she works with, particularly the leadership team of Terrier Tonight, as a “dream team” that has meshed well together. “Everybody has different strengths in different areas,” she says, “and it’s just been really cool to see where everybody fits and see the way that this show comes together.”