page_title: Variety show
section_title: 1980s–present
hierarchical_section_title: Variety show / History / 1980s–present
caption_attribution_description: English: Happy Camp is a Chinese variety show produced by Hunan Broadcasting System. The series debuted in 1997, and has remained in production since then due to its popularity. The show was hosted by the Happy Family: He Jiong, Li Weijia, Xie Na, and Wu Xin.中文（中国大陆）‎: 2009年7月，何炅、李维嘉、谢娜、吴昕主持的《快乐大本营》，嘉宾是古天乐。
context_page_description: Variety shows, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a compère or host. The variety format made its way from Victorian era stage to radio and then television. Variety shows were a staple of English language television from the late 1940s into the 1980s.
  While still widespread in some parts of the world, such as in the United Kingdom with the Royal Variety Performance, and South Korea with Running Man, the proliferation of multichannel television and evolving viewer tastes have affected the popularity of variety shows in the United States. Despite this, their influence has still had a major effect on late night television whose late night talk shows and NBC's variety series Saturday Night Live have remained popular fixtures of North American television.
context_section_description: By the early 1980s, the few new variety shows being produced were of remarkably poor quality (see, for instance, the infamous Pink Lady and Jeff), hastening the format's demise. A brief revival of the genre arose in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Variety shows from this era included Dolly (starring Dolly Parton), which ran for 23 episodes on ABC during the 1987–'88 season; The Tracey Ullman Show which aired on Fox from April 1987 through May 1990; a revival of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour from 1988 to 1989; a revival of The Carol Burnett Show, which was broadcast by CBS for nine episodes in 1991 (following up on Carol & Company on NBC the previous year); and Showtime's The Super Dave Osborne Show hosted by Bob Einstein from 1987 to 1991.
  By the 21st century, the variety show format had fallen out of fashion, due largely to changing tastes and the fracturing of media audiences (caused by the proliferation of cable and satellite television) that makes a multiple-genre variety show impractical. Even reruns of variety shows have generally not been particularly widespread; TV Land telecasted briefly some variety shows (namely The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour) upon its beginning in 1996, but within a few years, reruns of most of those shows (except The Flip Wilson Show) stopped. Similarly, CMT held the rights to Hee Haw but telecast very few episodes, opting mainly to hold rights to allow them to air performance videos from the show in its video blocks. The current rights holder of Hee Haw, RFD-TV, has been more prominent in its telecasts of the show; RFD-TV also airs numerous other country-style variety shows from the 1960s and 1970s up through the present day, in a rarity for modern television. Another notable exception is The Lawrence Welk Show, which has been telecast continually in reruns on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) since 1986. The Danny Kaye Show returned to television in 2017 with reruns on Jewish Life Television (and, in the case of a one-off Christmas special, the Christian-leaning network INSP); JLTV dropped Kaye from its schedule at the end of 2018. Digital multicast network getTV shows variety shows on an irregular basis. The Spanish language variety show Sabado Gigante, which began in 1962, and then moved from Chile to the United States in 1986, continued to produce and broadcast new episodes on Univision until its cancellation in September 2015.
  At least one national variety show continues on national radio: Live from Here, a musical variety series hosted by Chris Thile. It has followed three formats over the course of its history, the first and longest being that of A Prairie Home Companion; founding host Garrison Keillor created the series in 1974 as an homage to rural radio variety shows, featuring sketch comedy based on radio dramas of the old-time radio era, complete with faux commercials. (The other format, The American Radio Company of the Air, also hosted and created by Keillor, was set in a more urban environment and likewise was based on old-time radio; its short run in the late 1980s eventually morphed into a revival of A Prairie Home Companion). Live from Here, which was established in its current format in 2016 and took on its name a year later after losing the rights to the A Prairie Home Companion name, focuses mainly on musical acts.
  Improvisational comic Wayne Brady, coming off his successful appearances on the panel game Whose Line Is It Anyway?, launched an eponymous variety show in 2001, which aired on ABC. The Wayne Brady Show lasted only one summer season in its variety format; when the show returned the next year in syndication, it had been reformatted as a talk show, under which format it ran until 2004.
  Fox's Osbournes Reloaded, a variety show featuring the family of rocker Ozzy Osbourne, was canceled after only one episode had been telecast in 2009. More than two dozen affiliates refused to telecast the first episode of the show. This series had been slated for a six-episode run.
  NBC has made repeated attempts at reviving the variety format since t
caption: Singers perform on the Chinese variety TV show Happy Camp.
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