January 11, 1981

''There are certain kinds of controversy we create by being unlike anything else on the air. The danger is, you start to think you're everything the reviews say you are.'' -Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of NBC's original ''Saturday Night Live,'' in 1977. ''We can risk, be honest and either win or fail honorably. Or we can play safe and be a plastic, cloned 'Saturday Night Live 2.''' -Peter Tauber, a former writer on the new ''Saturday Night Live,'' in a memo last September to producer Jean Doumanian.

The citizens' tax revolt of the late 1970's is now, for the first time, causing substantial reductions in state and local services around the nation. For several years treasury surpluses in a number of states cushioned the impact of the tax cuts, spending limits and rebates to citizens demanded by the electorate. But a check of representative state capitals found that most legislatures meeting this month are facing a shortage of revenues that has brought, or is expected to bring, layoffs and reductions in many areas of government. ''The moment of truth is upon us,'' Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. told the California Legislature in his budget message yesterday. When the current fiscal year ends June 30, he said, the state will have nothing left of a surplus that once approached $4 billion. The Governor's spending proposal represented a rise of only $300 million from the current $24.2 billion budget, which he said was not enough to keep pace with inflation.

In a compromise that all but assured the prompt confirmation of Alexander M. Haig Jr. as Secretary of State, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed today to subpoena logs summarizing 100 hours of tapes of 1973 conversations between Mr. Haig and President Nixon. The logs were sought so they could be checked to see if the tapes themselves were needed to judge Mr. Haig's qualifications. Committee Democrats agreed Main points of testimony, page 26. that a Senate vote on Mr. Haig's nomination should not be put off if there was a delay in obtaining logs or tapes. Republicans hope to push the vote through on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

THE chill wind that greets commuters stepping off the 5:07 when the train arrives in Huntington is colder than the one they left behind in Manhattan, a fact that has dismayed many, especially as the temperatures in the metropolitan area have grown consistently cooler since mid-December. Generally, say meteorologists on the Island, the temperatures in Nassau and Suffolk Counties are approximately 10 degrees colder than in the city, with the North Shore slightly colder than the South Shore and the East End cooler than the west. ''There are slight temperature discrepancies from shore to shore,'' said Hal Pillinger, a meteorologist with the Metro Weather Service in Queens, ''but the Island suffers more in the extreme cold than the city.''

Andrea Jaeger, 15 years old, stunned Martina Navratilova in three sets tonight and joined Tracy Austin in the final of the $250,000 Colgate Series championship. Miss Jaeger, who was only one point from elimination in a match earlier in the week against Virginia Ruzici, scored her most significant victory on the women's tour tonight, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1. Miss Navratilova was the defender and had lost only one match in six years in the Washington area. Miss Jaeger's triumph - her second in two meetings with Miss Navratilova - followed Miss Austin's 6-2, 6-1 rout of a tired Wendy Turnbull in the opening semifinal before a crowd of 11,800 at the Capital Centre.