Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!

Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America''s evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan''s genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville-and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for ...