The unappreciated benefit could be newsletters of the newsletters. The ability to a quarterly or annual edition based on an equal distribution of content over time.

Can say selfishly as a user, it really is worth those hours, but half a day a week is quite the investment. Perhaps you could post that as a bounty job each week if/when things get busy(er). Especially as you have now laid-out the methodology. But I suspect SNL is the bulk of those hours, in addition to ‘normal’ site usage.