Inside the 'Saturday Night Live' Bloodbath — Creator Guts Entire Cast in Brutal Show Shake-up to Desperately Save Iconic Late-night Program

Saturday Night Live creator and head honcho Lorne Michaels is "gutting" the cast of the iconic satire show – which has been a launching pad for superstars including Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell and Chris Rock – in a seemingly desperate move to save it amid buzz that all late-night shows are on the chopping block, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

80-year-old Michaels, who's run the skit show all but five years of its five decades, gave a gloomy warning of a "significant shake-up" where "several current cast members [of the current 17] are expected to exit" before season 51 premieres on October 4.

The cast-gutting comes with a sense of desperation as the veteran producer admitted he feels "pressure to reinvent this season" as late-night shows on NBC and other networks face doomsday.

As RadarOnline.com previously noted, CBS has axed Stephen Colbert's late talk show as of next May – some say to speed up an $8 billion merger for the network's parent company through the Federal Communications Commission.

Currently, NBC shells out $4 million per episode or about $100 million yearly for SNL, which pulls in an average of 8 million viewers per show.

But sources also said SNL and NBC's weekday late shows – hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers – lose a whopping combined $100 million a year. And ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live reportedly "doesn't cover its costs from regular TV advertising."

Media expert Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, believes SNL will continue as long as Michaels, who launched it in 1975, can run it, but at age 80, that probably won't be too long.