Bigger Don
Practically Family
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Vaudeville performers used the same routines, week after week. When they went to radio, they needed new material each week. That is driven the repetition-rate the attendant audience will endure, i.e. how often a given audience will listen to or watch the same routine.Radio comedians were supposed to do a new show with new material every week, thrity-nine weeks out of the year, and the better ones did. Hope's 1938-40 stuff is excellent, because he was willing to experiment. He stopped experimenting once he became "Mr. Army Camp." It may have cemented his place in the hearts of GIs everywhere, but it was tedious, mediocre, even lazy comedy. Even Hope himself finally realized this, completely shaking up his radio format after the war, but it was too late to really recapture his prewar momentum, and by the fifties he'd stopped trying.
In short, road shows are different than weekly shows. If I saw Jerry Seinfeld in a comedy venue a couple of times a year I would expect the show to be 90% or more the same material, although his sitcom would be written fresh for each week. Even over a number of years, George Carlin's routine continued to have some repeated routines. Heck, same thing happens in music. Musical performances, whether rock/pop "stars" or locals or philharmonics or Sousaphonic marchers, use familiar material in each performance.
IOW, the insinuation than the troops failed to "catch on" seems a false canard cast upon them.