Variety shows almost always featured musical (instrumental, vocal, and dance) performances and comedy sketches, and sometimes acrobatics. animal or magic tricks, and dramatic recitations. Some had musical or comedy stars as hosts, often already known from radio or the recording industry, who displayed their talents solo or with guest performers. Others featured personalities, such as Ted Mack or Ed Sullivan, who acted as emcees and provided continuity for what was basically a series of unrelated acts. This genre was produced by both networks and local television stations. Some of the most popular musical variety programs, such as The Lawrence Welk Show and The Liberace Show, began as local productions for Los Angeles stations. The form has its heritage in 19th-century American entertainment-minstrel, vaudeville, and burlesque shows-and the 20th-century nightclub and Catskills resorts revues (where such talents as Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Carl Reiner were found).

     These forms of entertainment emphasized presentational or performative aspects-immediacy, spontaneity, and spectacle--over storyline and character development. Performers might develop a "persona," but this character mask would usually represent a well­ known stereotype or exhibit a particular vocal or dance talent. rather than embody a fleshed-out character growing within the context of dramatic situations. The vaudeville show, which had achieved a middle-class following by the 20th century, presented a series of unrelated acts, featured stars or "headliners," in addition to supporting acts. Many of the form's most important stars made the transition to radio or films in the 1920s and 1930s, and some of these, such as Ed Wynn, were also among the stars of television·s first variety shows. Two of the most significant "headliners" of vaudeville and stars of radio. Jack Benny and Burns and Allen made a successful transition to television, but while their shows retained aspects of vaudeville and variety (especially Benny's program with movie star guests and the regularly featured singer Dennis Day), they also combined those elements with the narrative features of situation comedy. A less-successful radio comedian, Milton Berle, brought vaudeville back in a much bigger way (his and other television variety­ vaudeville shows were called "vaudeo") because his performances emphasized the visual spectacle of the live stage impossible on radio.

     The spontaneous, rowdy antics and adult humor of Milton Berle, or of Sid Caesar and company on Your Show of Shows, were most popular on the east coast, where they could be aired live (before the coaxial cable was laid across the country), and where an urban population might be familiar with these performance styles from nightclubs and resorts. As demographics and ratings from other parts of the country became more important to advertisers and networks, as telefilm programming (usually sitcoms and western dramas) became more successful, and as moral watchdog groups and cultural pundits criticized the genre for its "blue" jokes, some comedy-variety shows fell out of favor. The gentle, childlike humor of Red Skelton became more popular than the cross-dressing of Berle, just as the various comic "personas" of Jackie Gleason (such as the Poor Soul, Joe the Bartender, and Ralph Kramden) proved more acceptable to wide audiences than the foreign-movie spoofs performed by Caesar and company. While Berle and Caesar stayed on the air for most of the 1950s, it was these other comics and their variety hours that made the transitions into the 1960s.

     Variety shows emphasizing music, such as The Dinah Shore Show, The Perry Como Show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, The Lawrence Welk Show, Your Hit Parade, The Bell Telephone Hour, and The Voice of Firestone (the latter two emphasizing classical music performance), had long runs and little controversy. Nat "King" Cole, the first major black performer to have a network variety series, had a great difficulty securing sponsors for his show when it debuted in 1956, and most of the important black musical stars of the time (and many of the white ones as well) appeared for reduced fees to help save the show. NBC canceled it a little over a year after its debut.

     Besides several of the above mentioned shows, The Smothers Brothers Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show (which would leave the air in  1971  after  23 years) found  success  in  the 1960s, even as the  prime-time  schedule  became more and more filled with dramatic programs and situation comedies. The Smothers Brothers Show caused some controversy with its anti-Vietnam War jokes, and the brothers tangled with CBS over Pete Seeger's singing of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." Ed Sullivan stayed popular by booking rock  acts, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and Carol Burnett continued the delicious spoofing of films that Your Show of Shows had started. For the most part, however, the cultural changes in the late 1960s and 1970s overtook the relevance of the  variety  form. The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Tony Orlando and Dawn-all shows featuring popular music stars with a youth culture following-achieved some popularity in the 1970s. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,  a  different type of variety program, prefigured the faster, more culturally literate and irreverent style that would survive, in limited form, into the 1990s. Clearly more oriented toward satire and sketch comedy than to the music-variety form of other programs,  Laugh-In  in its way recalled the inventiveness of Your Show of Shows.

     Only one show from the 1970s, with the focus on the youth demographic, has lasted into the 21st century: NBC's Saturday Night Live. This program, mainly emphasizing satirical comedy and featuring a different host and musical guest or group every week, has captured the teen, college, and young adult crowd with a late-night airing (11:30 P.M. Eastern and Pacific time). Although critics periodically call for its demise as the quality of writing waxes and wanes, the show has created film and television  stars out of many of its regular performers. In the late 1990s. FOX Television started airing MAD TV. its own entry into Saturday late-night variety programming. MAD TV, based on the irreverent satire magazine of the same name published since the 1950s, is actually structured much like its NBC competitor, but it features celebrity or musical guests less frequently. Although these network variety shows have remained popular and a reunion special of The Carol Burnett Show in late 2001 received surprisingly high ratings, the general lack of the genre on television despite the proliferation of  new  channels, may suggest  its permanent eclipse, as the viewer  with   a remote control can now create his or her own variety show, switching from stand-up comedy on A&E or Comedy Central to ballet and opera on PBS or Bravo, from rock and roll on MTV  to country  music on TNN.