Each season's cast is made up of a repertory of roughly 8-12 core repertory players and a handful of "featured" players, who fill out the cast and often graduate to the repertory level. But why settle on a handful? Tying into to our call for diversity, the show should establish a large pool of NYC-based comedians that serve specific functions within the show. These on-call featured players would offer flexibility in writing, cut costs for the show, develop a hungry core of performers, and expose the "SNL" audience to a wide range of comic voices. The audience, not simply the producers, would be able to shape which of these players truly get featured.