Variety Show / Dueling Works Live Action TV

Initiators / Followers
- Capsule Pitch Description: Description
- Implementation: Implementation

The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) / The Hollywood Palace (1964)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Vaudeville-style variety show, with acts spanning every genre and generation.
- Implementation: The Ed Sullivan Show – initially known as the "Toast of the Town" was hosted by the New York entertainment columnist, and he presented every type of act imaginable – from burlesque comedy and opera to ballet and top popular music acts of the day; the best-known episodes are the ones that featured early national TV performances of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The Muppets. Among the many competing shows of "various acts" bills was ABC's Hollywood Palace, taped at the eponymously-named venue in Hollywood, California. Unlike Ed Sullivan, Hollywood Palace had guest hosts each week; the program is best known for the earliest performances of The Rolling Stones and The Jackson 5.

American Bandstand (1952) / Soul Train (1971)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Teens dancing to the popular music of the day. The day's hottest musical acts appeared as well.
- Implementation: To put it bluntly — American Bandstand was for white kids and emphasized the music, and Soul Train was for black kids and emphasized the dancing. A difference that was highlighted by both shows' signature segments: Bandstand's song ratings ("It's got a good beat and you can dance to it!") and the Soul Train Line.

Shindig! (1964) / Hullabaloo (1965) & Shivaree (1965) & Hollywood a Go-Go (1965)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Prime-time musical variety shows featuring the Top 40 acts of the day singing their hits, accompanied by go-go dancers.
- Implementation: Shindig! debuted on ABC in September 1964 and was hosted by Jimmy O'Neil. NBC's answer, Hullabaloo, premiered in January 1965 and was hosted by various guest hosts. Shivaree and Hollywood a Go-Go were local programs that were nationally syndicated around the same time; they were hosted, respectively, by Sam Riddle and Gene Weed.

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968) / Turn-On (1969)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Comedy/variety show produced by George Schlatter
- Implementation: Laugh-In was the #1 show at the time for NBC. ABC decided to get in on the action by making their own irreverent sketch show that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time.

Morecambe and Wise (1968) / The Two Ronnies (1971)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Two British comedy shows heavily inspired by music hall/vaudeville comedy and featuring two pairs of very good friends
- Implementation: Both shows ran on BBC-1 for most of the 1970s, garnering high ratings. The Rons had also some solo works while M&W concentrated in their show.

The Midnight Special (1972) / Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (1973)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Ninety minutes of live music by a variety of acts, with occasional taped shows and comedy.
- Implementation: Special debuted six months before Rock Concert. Special aired on NBC, Rock Concert was syndicated. The biggest difference between the shows were the hosts: Midnight Special had Wolfman Jack as the announcer and a series of guest hosts; Rock Concert was hosted by Kirshner himself.

Saturday Night Live (1975) / Fridays (1980)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Variety sketch shows featuring a cast of young, unknown comedians and comedy writers, popular celebrities of the day, popular musical performances of the day, and both air live on their respective coasts (SNL in the East and Fridays in the West)
- Implementation: ABC's Fridays started out as a crude and disgusting carbon copy of SNL (in fact, a lot of affiliates dropped the show entirely after the third episode, which featuring a sketch about a zombie diner, a sketch about a priest who buys an inflatable sex doll modeled after a nun, and a talk show parody about prim and proper women who spit). But the infamous Season 6 of SNL, which had a poorly-received wholesale turnover of cast and creative team, coincided with a retool of Fridays that emphasized its Crazy Is Cool cast of comedians and a high-quality selection of musical guests, so Fridays briefly outpaced SNL, before a timeslot change and an ill-fated attempt to move to prime time doomed it.

Saturday Night Live (1975) / The New Show (1984)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Sketch Comedy Variety Show
- Implementation: Both shows have guests and musical guests and were produced by Lorne Michaels.

Saturday Night Live (1975) / MADtv (1995)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Sketch Comedy Variety Show.
- Implementation: The first is a classic of the genre, despite its many ups and downs. The other is pretty much the same, only it's taped, pared down to an hour long, and comes off the heels of In Living Color! being cancelled after five years and House of Buggin and Saturday Night Special being taken off the air due to bad reviews and worse ratings.

Have I Got News for You (1990) / Mock the Week (2005)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Comedy panel quiz/"quiz" focusing on recent news, featuring both regular panellists and guests
- Implementation: HIGNFY has been running much longer and is generally considered more cerebral and culturally valuable, but MTW is a good contender comedy-wise. Frequently draw from the same pool of guests.

Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam (1992) / BET's Comicview (1992)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Stand-up comedy series that showcase young, up-and-coming black comedians
- Implementation: Both debuted in the mid '90s, during the Stand Up Comedy Boom. Def Comedy tends to pull bigger names and uses its pay cable slot to get away with saltier language. Comicview tends to edit its shows, often splicing several comics together for themed segments.

Comedy Inc (2003) / Big Bite (2003) & skitHOUSE (2003)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Australian sketch comedy series launched by commercial networks in the first half of 2003
- Implementation: Seven had Big Bite, Nine Comedy Inc and Ten skitHouse

Tosh.0 (2009) / Web Soup (2009)
- Capsule Pitch Description: The Soup-inspired snarky weekly rundowns of viral videos.
- Implementation: Comedy Central's Tosh sticks mostly to YouTube stuff and viewer submissions and its signature "Web Redemption" segment. G4's Web Soup is more Attack of the Show!'s "Epic Fail" segments meets The Soup, using AOTS-style graphics.

The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo (2020) / Muppets Now (2020)
- Capsule Pitch Description: Spinoffs/revivals of the two most well-known Jim Henson series (Sesame Street and The Muppets) that bring the characters into a different style of variety series (a talk show and web videos, specifically). Both series marked the characters' debut on streaming television.
- Implementation: The Not-Too-Late Show and Muppets Now have both been compared to the original The Muppet Show, with their emphasis on sketch comedy and celebrity cameos. Both series had new episodes released weekly with a generally similar format episode-to-episode; Not-Too-Late Show boasted 13 episodes in its first season while Muppets Now only had 6.

Dueling Works Live Action TV / Variety Show