Rob Beckett's Smart TV

These half-hour specials showcased some of the best up-and-coming comedians of the moment. The show was a pivotal stepping stone for many of today's stand-up stars.

The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the CBS Sunday Night Movie, which ran only one season and was eventually replaced by other shows. In 2002, The Ed Sullivan Show was ranked #15 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

Host Zach Galifianakis conducts comical celebrity interviews sitting with his guests between two potted ferns on a sparse set, in the awkward style of low-budget community access cable channels.

Based on Scott Aukerman’s popular podcast of the same name, COMEDY BANG! BANG! cleverly riffs on the well-known format of the late night talk show, infusing celebrity appearances and comedy sketches with a tinge of the surreal. In each episode, Aukerman engages his guests with unfiltered and improvisational lines of questioning, punctuated by banter and beats provided by bandleader, one-man musical mastermind Reggie Watts, to reinvent the traditional celebrity interview. Packed with character cameos, filmic shorts, sketches and games set amongst an off-beat world, COMEDY BANG! BANG! delivers thirty minutes of absurd laugh-loaded fun featuring some of the biggest names in comedy.

Jonathan Ross's take on current topics of conversation, guest interviews and live music from both a guest music group and the house band.

Jon Stewart fait preuve de son humour emblématique dans cette série nommée aux Emmy® Awards, se penchant sur les problèmes les plus persistants de l'Amérique et essayant de trouver des solutions avec les personnes les plus haut placées au pouvoir... si seulement elles retournaient ses appels.

Jerry takes his comedy pals out for coffee in a selection of his classic automobiles. Larry David sums it up best when he says, 'You've finally made a show about nothing.'

The World’s Foremost Drive-in Movie Critic – actually he’s pretty much the world’s only Drive-in Critic – Joe Bob Briggs brings his iconic swagger to this firebrand of horror and drive-in cinema offering honest appreciation, hilarious insight, inside stories and of course, the Drive-in totals.

Da Ali G Show is a British satirical television series created by and starring English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. In the series, Baron Cohen plays three unorthodox journalists: faux-streetwise poseur Ali G, Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev, and gay Austrian fashion enthusiast Brüno Gehard. These characters conduct real interviews with unsuspecting people, many of whom are celebrities, high-ranking government officials, and other well-known figures, during which they are asked absurd and ridiculous questions.

The outrageous comedy panel show hosted by the irrepressible Keith Lemon. Each episode sees top celebrities going head to head in a series of hilarious rounds unlike any other panel show.

L'acteur d'improvisation et comique Stephen Colbert laisse derrière lui son personnage "The Colbert Report" alors qu'il fait son retour tant attendu à la télévision. En tant qu'hôte de la franchise The Late Show redux - enregistrée au théâtre historique Ed Sullivan à New York - Colbert parle pour la première fois aux acteurs, aux athlètes, aux politiciens, aux bandes dessinées, aux artistes et aux musiciens. Les fans fidèles, cependant, seront également traités avec cohérence car Colbert reste soutenu par de nombreux membres de son équipe d'écriture et numérique de son ancienne entreprise. Jon Batiste, formé à Julliard, est le chef d'orchestre.

Comedy sketch show with hilarious characters and absurdist twists from the duo that brought us Peep Show and The Smoking Room - David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Web Junk 20 is an American television program in which Vh1 and iFilm collaborate to highlight the twenty funniest and most interesting clips collected from the Internet that week. The show is now hosted by comedian Aries Spears. Patrice O'Neal hosted the first two seasons, while Jim Breuer hosted Season 3. Rachel Perry introduces the premise of each clip via voice-over. Season 3 of the show introduced credit given to websites the clips are taken from. Previous seasons of the show would only introduce the clips, but website addresses from sites such as ebaumsworld.com or break.com could clearly be seen in the clips.

Late Night with David Letterman is a nightly hour-long comedy talk show on NBC that was created and hosted by David Letterman. It premiered in 1982 as the first incarnation of the Late Night franchise and went off the air in 1993, after Letterman left NBC and moved to Late Show on CBS. Late Night with Conan O'Brien then filled the time slot. As of March 2, 2009, the slot has been filled by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It will be filled by Seth Meyers in the spring of 2014, after Fallon becomes host of The Tonight Show.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is an American late-night talk show hosted by Scottish American comedian Craig Ferguson, who is the third regular host of the Late Late Show franchise. It follows Late Show with David Letterman in the CBS late-night lineup, airing weekdays in the US at 12:37 a.m. It is taped in front of a live studio audience from Monday to Friday at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California, directly above the Bob Barker Studio. It is produced by David Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants Incorporated and CBS Television Studios. Since becoming host on January 3, 2005, after Craig Kilborn and Tom Snyder, Ferguson has achieved the highest ratings since the show's inception in 1995. While the majority of the episodes focus on comedy, Ferguson has also addressed difficult subject matter, such as the deaths of his parents, and undertaken serious interviews, such as one with Desmond Tutu, which earned the show a 2009 Peabody Award.

Each week, Jefferies tackles the week’s top stories from behind his desk and travels the globe to far-off locations to provide an eye opening look at hypocrisy around the world. Featuring interviews, international field pieces, and man on the ground investigations, Jim tackles the news of the day with no-bulls**t candor, piercing insight and a uniquely Aussie viewpoint.

Trending news, pop culture, social media, original videos and more come together in host Joel McHale's weekly comedy commentary show.

Each week celebrity guests join Irish comedian Graham Norton to discuss what's being going on around the world that week. The guests poke fun and share their opinions on the main news stories. Graham is often joined by a band or artist to play the show out.

Each week a group of four famous faces go toe to toe in testing their general knowledge skills in a variety of entertaining games.

Stepping into the late-late slot vacated by David Letterman, Conan O'Brien stars in a show that far outdoes its competition in sheer strangeness. Along with the celebrity interviews and musical numbers typical of late-night talk shows, this program make frequent use of odd walk-on characters and frequent "visits" from celebrity guests.