Variety Show

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A descendant of Vaudeville: an anthology of unrelated performances, some musical, some comedic. The first breakout television shows were variety shows, most notably The Ed Sullivan Show. Important examples include The Carol Burnett Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. As you might notice, many such shows were named for the host.

This format fell out of favor in the early 1980s. Cable (particularly MTV and HBO) provided alternate outlets for the music, stand-up comedy, and miscellaneous acts that were the bread-and-butter of these shows, and viewers no longer had to sit through three acts they weren't interested in for the sake of one that they wanted to see. Moreover, fatigue with the genre had sprung up in The Seventies -- Donny and Marie and Sonny and Cher were only the best-known examples in a decade that also brought us increasingly corny shows toplined by such acts as The Brady Bunch and the Bay City Rollers. One-shot and annual specials such as Circus of the Stars persisted into the early 1990s, but even those are now relatively rare.

Occasional attempts to revive the genre (on networks or cable) have been doomed to failure, though some might argue that Sketch Comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live, the late-night Talk Show format, and reality competitions such as American Idol and America's Got Talent keep the form on life support.

Producers of the British Sitcom The Young Ones booked a band for a guest appearance in every episode; musical performances qualified the series as a variety show, and it was therefore permitted a larger budget than usual for a BBC sitcom.

Examples of Variety Show include: