Variety show Stan Laurel revisited his music hall days when he performed at the "Royal Variety" show. In the United States, former vaudeville performers such as the Marx Brothers, George Burns and Gracie Allen, W. C. Fields, and Jack Benny honed their skills in the Borscht Belt before moving to talkies, to radio shows, and then to television shows, including variety shows. Variety shows were among the first programs to be featured on television during the experimental mechanical television era. Variety shows hosted by Helen Haynes and Harriet Lee are recorded in contemporary newspapers in 1931 and 1932; because of technical limits
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson Ferguson agreed to a contract extension through 2014. As part of the deal, CBS will co-produce the show with Worldwide Pants and CBS Television Studios and the show will move to a bigger studio. Although financial terms were not disclosed, the extension likely included a raise beyond what "Variety" reported had been his US$13 million salary. Following the departure of Jay Leno from "The Tonight Show" and the late night shake-up at NBC, both "Late Show" and "The Late Late Show" struggled in the ratings against Jimmy Fallon and his successor at 12:30 a.m. ET/PT, "Late Night with Seth Meyers".