[5] In 1952, Jack Kent Cooke became the magazine's publisher after he purchased its owner, Consolidated Press, and it entered a period of decline, and switched from weekly to fortnightly publication in 1954.

Under his editorial guidance, the magazine enjoyed critical success and expanded its arts and literary coverage and was also an important source of long-form political reportage, much of it by Christina McCall.

[5] In 1974, the magazine again ceased publication for six months due to financial difficulties until it was purchased by a group of funders led by developer Murray Frum and a $100,000 grant from Imperial Oil.

Under Fulford, Saturday Night also featured short stories and poetry and gave poet Dennis Lee and writer Margaret Atwood their first national exposure.

The title was saved, however, when it was purchased by MultiVision Publishing and re-emerged under editor Matthew Church as a bimonthly (and later 10 times-a-year) newsstand magazine (with some copies inserted in subscription National Posts) beginning in April 2002 as Vol 117, No 1, Issue #3886.

[14] On December 18, 2008, the Saturday Night website was relaunched as a blog, with the initial post indicating that the site would "canvas the country and present you with a unique and intriguing perspective on our national life in politics and power, sex and crime, entertainment and culture, arts and literature, style and design."

[16] Editors and contributors have included Robert Thomas Allen, Robertson Davies, Sylvia Fraser, Douglas Gibson, Peter Gzowski, Ernest Hillen, J. Timothy Hunt, Michael Ignatieff, Yousuf Karsh, Bharati Mukherjee, Erna Paris, Alexander Fraser Pirie, Mordecai Richler, Clarence Tillenius, Martin Vaughn-James (as cartoonist), and Isabel Vincent.