Shocking as this may sound there was a time when TV was a brand new medium and the producers, mainly interested in selling soap and cigarettes (literally) did not know what to do with it. So they tried to re-cycle tried and true formulas for entertainment, which meant grabbing anything still twitching from vaudeville (and post-vaudeville, which included radio and the musical movies) putting it in front of camera and sound-stage, and then watching to see if the audience went for it. More often than not they did, and sometimes it worked so well that the audience got addicted (this show, the Gleason show, the Sullivan show). These were experiences today's generation will never know, especially since, with 500 channels, no one is really re-broadcasting these classics. The Benny show is as a good as it gets, better even than Burns, which is saying something. Jack Benny was not merely an actor, he was an entertainment machine, and each show plays to this. Astonishing example of the lost art of star-based comedy. With hindsight, each show was based on nothing -- which was precisely the formula that Seinfeld used a half-century later to entrance audiences all over again