Television genres come and go. Sitcoms rule the airwaves for a few years, then hour-long crime dramas take over, or doctor shows, or soap operas, or whatever. The current strength of “reality” TV is due in no small part to the surprise success of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, which ushered in a slew of prime time game shows, which had been absent from television since the scandals of the 1950s. The game show craze spawned “Survivor” and “The Bachelor”, both of which were game-like, and so on and so on.
So it was inevitable that another hoary old television genre would work its way back — musical variety shows. If you are over the age of 40, you are old enough to remember at least some of the shows at the tail end of this genre in the late 1960s and 1970s like the last years of the Ed Sullivan Show, or possibly the Smothers Brothers or Carol Burnett. If you’re over the age of 50, you definitely remember those shows and probably a good deal more of them, as there were plenty to go around. TV historians like to say that the TV variety show was “the box they buried vaudeville in” because it was the last venue for that entire style of entertainment.
MIT media professor Henry Jenkins is back at his blog and lets us know that he recently was included in an upcoming PBS series about the history of early television, and wrote this article for the series’ website about the variety show episode. In that article he lays out his claim that the variety show has returned in its 21st century guise as a variation on reality shows; American Idol, America’s Got Talent, Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, etc. are quintessentially variety shows repackaged for contemporary tastes and sensibilities. To make the throwback complete, there are even off-air scandals about rigging, just like the quiz show scandals of yore.
You realize, of course, that this means we’re a bit overdue for the return of the Western. Deadwood did pretty well on HBO, and if they ever resolve the writers’ strike, maybe they’ll work in a few horse operas.
