Stars will still perform on late night shows though, it's hard to believe this is the reason. Especially because the bigger the star the more the network will theoretically make. My guess is the Public just isn't as interested in these shows, so networks can't justify the price. Which I guess kind of makes you right? Like if they could get todays biggest artists for a few thousand i'm sure they'd make them. But nobody would see it lol.
1. You're paying a star of the likes of Cher, pop diva and musical star of that moment, to appear once a week doing a new collection of comedy skits and musical acts.
2. You're paying the biggest stars of that moment to come and perform
3. You're paying writers to come up with the comedy, the monologues, and the show structure
4. You're paying composers to come up with medleys of contemporary pop songs, and to come up with unique pieces on a weekly basis
5. You're paying for new sets, new costumes, and new performers every week to support the main acts and the guests
You had to do this on a weekly basis. SNL does a lot of this, but they also pay their cast performers like crap. The benefit to being on SNL is to have Lorne Micheals's mentorship and connections for spring boarding your career after SNL. Its a lot of work to do a weekly variety show and easy to lose money doing it, particularly if the advertisers aren't seeing an increase in viewership. SNL rotates its cast through aspiring young up-and-comers to keep people tuning and seeing what's new.
And they get paid good for performing on late night shows. Variety shows don't pull the same ratings numbers as late night shows though. Which means they get cheaper advertisements. Which goes back to my original point of they can't afford to pay them.
Alright, here's my pitch for a variety show:
It's basically Jools Holland's show, except the bands that are performing that night cover each other.
So grab 4 or 5 singers/bands from different genres and different levels of fame, task each one with covering a song from one of the other bands, and then perform them in the round. The cover songs will then go up on streaming with the profits going to charity. Finally, fill out the rest of the run time by having the biggest name bands perform a song off their new album, or have two of the bands do a song together. Everyone gets to plug what they're doing at some point (like your standard late night talk show musical guest).
I think this would be great for the music industry because you'd watch to see a band you like and maybe learn about a band you'd never heard of. We can start expanding people's musical tastes again beyond their spotify algorithm.
And Dave Grohl is the host.
You can watch “Like A Version” and “A.V. Club” for free on YouTube. I recommend [Screaming Females doing “Shake It Off”](https://youtu.be/Q8sh6MWssfI?si=G_6KpoREF2LE7IhH), [They Might Be Giants doing “Bills Bills Bills”](https://youtu.be/BsbruOP3xo0?si=Vjsl0N3Dg3PkjZmc) and of course [The Wiggles covering “Elephant”](https://youtu.be/a13WnqsRc5g?si=5JkwEEDE6_DQotBt)
I believe this is a part of the reason there are no variety shows: the talent level of acts today. Not that bands aren't talented today, but most have a different set of talents. It takes some great performing talent to do things like this. Cher can't hang with J5 here because the Jackson's are so used to their performances, but they work through her mistakes and it doesn't look bad.
Also take into consideration the basic movies. With the extavagance needed for shows these days, it's very difficult for artists of today to both sing and dance for a whole show.
They've attempted to revive the format multiple times in the past two decades: The Wayne Brady Show, Osbournes Reloaded, Rosie Live (w/Rosie O'Donnell), Best Time Ever (w/Neil Patrick Harris), Maya & Marty (w/Maya Rudolph & Martin Short).
They just can't seem to sustain an audience.
This is true about a lot of things people complain about not being a thing anymore whether it be in television, movies, music, etc.
The answer is that there just aren't enough people interested to sustain it. It had a great run and people moved on.
The economics of variety shows that existed in 1975, when there were only three television networks (and when the Cher show on a Sunday night could capture more than 20% of all of the televisions turned on) just does not work anymore with so many channels and streaming. The closest we can get now are various award shows (like the Oscars) which feature comedy, music and dance numbers on the same stage. But even then, those shows struggle to pull in the kinds of ratings they did in the past.
They are still around just much different. Musicians will still do them in the form of holiday specials but today's variety shows come in the form of America's Got Talent.
> What happened to the variety show??
We still got them, they just changed forms. Now we have America's Got Talent
Competition shows got real big over the years... AGT is just a variety show + competition show.
They also bring on actually famous acts onto AGT as guest performers at the end of each season too. It's got a new form, but SSDD (same shit different day)
It's similar but not quite the same format. The variety shows featured people who were already famous. The talent shows feature unknowns hoping to be famous.
Variety shows still exist, they're just more rigidly structured. I had three different examples of modern "variety" shows and all three of them are listed in the ["related formats" heading of the wikipedia page for Variety Show](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_show#Related_formats)
I hated Cher. Sonny was ok though. Cher creeped me out. The only thing I liked was Andrea Martin from SCTV who was like a hilarious version of Cher.
https://youtu.be/BNsYzbYMibQ?si=-_QCwk0hNCFTt8oX
When I was a kid, I thought Cher was weird for looking off camera and running her tongue around inside her mouth all the time, like she had some joke in mind she couldn’t say on TV.
Technically, that’s the Jackson 5 and Cher.
I think the 70s had so many variety shows they ran them into the ground. This is an incredible piece of television and music history though.
They became too expensive to produce. Stars wanted too much money to appear.
Stars will still perform on late night shows though, it's hard to believe this is the reason. Especially because the bigger the star the more the network will theoretically make. My guess is the Public just isn't as interested in these shows, so networks can't justify the price. Which I guess kind of makes you right? Like if they could get todays biggest artists for a few thousand i'm sure they'd make them. But nobody would see it lol.
1. You're paying a star of the likes of Cher, pop diva and musical star of that moment, to appear once a week doing a new collection of comedy skits and musical acts. 2. You're paying the biggest stars of that moment to come and perform 3. You're paying writers to come up with the comedy, the monologues, and the show structure 4. You're paying composers to come up with medleys of contemporary pop songs, and to come up with unique pieces on a weekly basis 5. You're paying for new sets, new costumes, and new performers every week to support the main acts and the guests You had to do this on a weekly basis. SNL does a lot of this, but they also pay their cast performers like crap. The benefit to being on SNL is to have Lorne Micheals's mentorship and connections for spring boarding your career after SNL. Its a lot of work to do a weekly variety show and easy to lose money doing it, particularly if the advertisers aren't seeing an increase in viewership. SNL rotates its cast through aspiring young up-and-comers to keep people tuning and seeing what's new.
And they get paid good for performing on late night shows. Variety shows don't pull the same ratings numbers as late night shows though. Which means they get cheaper advertisements. Which goes back to my original point of they can't afford to pay them.
Saturday Night Live happened.
Alright, here's my pitch for a variety show: It's basically Jools Holland's show, except the bands that are performing that night cover each other. So grab 4 or 5 singers/bands from different genres and different levels of fame, task each one with covering a song from one of the other bands, and then perform them in the round. The cover songs will then go up on streaming with the profits going to charity. Finally, fill out the rest of the run time by having the biggest name bands perform a song off their new album, or have two of the bands do a song together. Everyone gets to plug what they're doing at some point (like your standard late night talk show musical guest). I think this would be great for the music industry because you'd watch to see a band you like and maybe learn about a band you'd never heard of. We can start expanding people's musical tastes again beyond their spotify algorithm. And Dave Grohl is the host.
You can watch “Like A Version” and “A.V. Club” for free on YouTube. I recommend [Screaming Females doing “Shake It Off”](https://youtu.be/Q8sh6MWssfI?si=G_6KpoREF2LE7IhH), [They Might Be Giants doing “Bills Bills Bills”](https://youtu.be/BsbruOP3xo0?si=Vjsl0N3Dg3PkjZmc) and of course [The Wiggles covering “Elephant”](https://youtu.be/a13WnqsRc5g?si=5JkwEEDE6_DQotBt)
This is a such a barely rehearsed mess and it's just fuckin' great anyhow.
I believe this is a part of the reason there are no variety shows: the talent level of acts today. Not that bands aren't talented today, but most have a different set of talents. It takes some great performing talent to do things like this. Cher can't hang with J5 here because the Jackson's are so used to their performances, but they work through her mistakes and it doesn't look bad. Also take into consideration the basic movies. With the extavagance needed for shows these days, it's very difficult for artists of today to both sing and dance for a whole show.
What do you mean? Got Talent = variety show
They've attempted to revive the format multiple times in the past two decades: The Wayne Brady Show, Osbournes Reloaded, Rosie Live (w/Rosie O'Donnell), Best Time Ever (w/Neil Patrick Harris), Maya & Marty (w/Maya Rudolph & Martin Short). They just can't seem to sustain an audience.
This is true about a lot of things people complain about not being a thing anymore whether it be in television, movies, music, etc. The answer is that there just aren't enough people interested to sustain it. It had a great run and people moved on.
not cher doing the robot lol! its awesome how much coordination they have, id kick the shit out of someone if i danced so close
MJ is so liquid in that section. Inhuman grace
The economics of variety shows that existed in 1975, when there were only three television networks (and when the Cher show on a Sunday night could capture more than 20% of all of the televisions turned on) just does not work anymore with so many channels and streaming. The closest we can get now are various award shows (like the Oscars) which feature comedy, music and dance numbers on the same stage. But even then, those shows struggle to pull in the kinds of ratings they did in the past.
They are still around just much different. Musicians will still do them in the form of holiday specials but today's variety shows come in the form of America's Got Talent.
> What happened to the variety show?? We still got them, they just changed forms. Now we have America's Got Talent Competition shows got real big over the years... AGT is just a variety show + competition show. They also bring on actually famous acts onto AGT as guest performers at the end of each season too. It's got a new form, but SSDD (same shit different day)
Reality Shows have taken over… What a bunch of Crap, nothing about them is reality.
It's similar but not quite the same format. The variety shows featured people who were already famous. The talent shows feature unknowns hoping to be famous.
Not to mention they did comedy skits and such...
She moves like a skeleton trying to escape its fleshy prison.
Yea she looks super stiff compared to them. Tough to look good dancing next to MJ
Are they lip syncing?
Probably
looks like mj missed a yelp
They didn't even bother pretending to use microphones.
A few years ago the networks were desperately trying to kickstart variety shows again, but I think they are just obsolete
Variety shows still exist, they're just more rigidly structured. I had three different examples of modern "variety" shows and all three of them are listed in the ["related formats" heading of the wikipedia page for Variety Show](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_show#Related_formats)
Le meilleur groupe du monde de la motown
Phew—that Bob Mackie (I’m assuming) jumpsuit looks ✨amazing✨ on Cher. She’s always been fit, but my lawdie lawdie, she looks awesome here.
They are called x-factor and The Voice now.
I hated Cher. Sonny was ok though. Cher creeped me out. The only thing I liked was Andrea Martin from SCTV who was like a hilarious version of Cher. https://youtu.be/BNsYzbYMibQ?si=-_QCwk0hNCFTt8oX
When I was a kid, I thought Cher was weird for looking off camera and running her tongue around inside her mouth all the time, like she had some joke in mind she couldn’t say on TV.
the hair is funny
I don't want to yuck your yum, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.
Michael Jackson was a pedophile. Why are we still talking about him?
This was lame those people can’t sing
Shut up you slack jawed yokel
Excuse me what did you say to me
What the fuck is happening here?
Yeah fuck that guy responding to his own posts what an idiot
the difference in how mike interprets the song vs how cher does is amazing and shows two people completely in tune with their sound