Last Saturday Justin Timberlake hosted Saturday Night Live. The previous Tuesday, Lorne Michaels had summoned Andy Samberg (Berkeley High represent!) to his office. Michaels asked if Samberg could come up with a sketch to showcase Timberlake’s vocal chops.  By Thursday, he had and presented a rough draft of the song to JT. They recorded it that night and shot the videos on Friday and Saturday. Then came the fun part: in a television first, the producers lobbied NBC execs to release an uncensored version of the digital short. Not having seen it yet, they then had what must have been one of the oddest successions of executive-level meetings in history. The final piece was played first for the NBC executive responsible for late-night programming Rick Ludwin. He brought along someone from legal. Ludwin bounced it upstairs for the final final, which came from Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, and Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal Television Group. Holy crap! The mere thought of these fine gentlemen of broadcasting sitting down to earnestly consider a video of Justin Timberlake singing about regifting a particular part of his anatomy makes me laugh almost as hard as the video did.

In an unprecedented move, the execs green lit the sketch and approved a second, uncensored version for release on YouTube. A “director’s cut” as it were. This version is currently burning up YouTube and closing in on three million views. Countless others have watched the original, censored version. This is in sharp contrast to the volatile exchange that occurred a little less than a year ago when NBC issued a cease-and-desist order to YouTube over the web rebroadcast of “Lazy Sunday,” another Samberg effort.

For any HR-type folk that punch through to JT and Samberg’s little ditty, I can only offer in my defense that this—the censored version—already appeared on network TV.

As for the other, more noteworthy version, you can see the NSFW clip here if you must.

Daniel Turman

UPDATE: Better still, NBC has also posted the video to their own website. Not surprisingly, they are rotating an array of ads next to the video. I was served up one from Hummer. I would never joke about this. Screen shot below. Props to Jalopnik.

More news, from Cnet.