The appearances of Elvis Presley on the two programs serve to illustrate the differences between them. When Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show: Sul­livan instructed the camera operators to shoot the picture only from the waist up. On The Steve Allen Show, Presley appeared in a tuxedo and serenaded a basset hound with his hit "You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog." Both strategies appeased nervous network censors, but each is emblematic of the show it served.

     Relations between the two prominent hosts were not cordial and reached a low point in October 1956. For his October 21 program, Allen scheduled a tribute to the late actor James Dean. When he learned that Sulli­van planned to air his own tribute to Dean a week earlier, Allen charged that Sullivan had stolen his idea. Sullivan denied the charges and accused Allen of lying. Allen moved his segment to October 14, when both programs paid tribute to the actor and showed clips from his last movie, Giant.

     Much of Allen's work on The Steve Allen Show (actually the second program produced under this title) resemble previous performances by him on The Tonight Show, which he had hosted since 1954 (after several months of hosting both series, Allen left The Tonight Show at the end of 1956). He often opened the program casually, seated at the piano. He would chat with the audience, participate in skits, and introduce guests. Television critic Jack Gould considered the new program merely an expanded version of The Tonight Show and characterized it as "mostly routine stuff." Gould did concede that "more imagination could take the program far." The Steve Allen Show offered Allen a natural setting for what Could termed his "conditioned social gift" of "creating spontaneous comedy in front of an audience in a given situation."

     Allen also continued something else he had begun on The Tonight Show, discovering new talent. Andy Williams, Eydie Gorme, and Steve  Lawrence  got their starts on The Tonight Show. On the new show, Allen's man-in-the-street interview  segments launched the careers of comedians Bill Dana, Pat Harrington, Jr., Louis Nye, Tom Poston, and Don Knotts. Dana played the timid Hispanic Jose Jiminez, and Harrington appeared as the suave Italian golfer Guido Panzino. Characters created by Nye, Poston, and Knotts were the best known of the group. Nye portrayed the effete and cosmopolitan Gordon Hathaway, whose cry "Hi Ho Steverino" became a trademark of the program. Poston was the sympathetic and innocent guy who would candidly answer any question but who could never remember his name. Probably the best-remembered character was the nervous Mr. Morrison portrayed by Knotts. Often Morrison's initials were related to his occupation. In one segment, he was introduced as K.B. Morrison, whose job in a munitions factory was to place the pins in hand grenades. When asked what the initials stood for, Knotts replied, "Kaa Boom!" Invariably, Allen would ask Knotts if he were nervous and always got the quick one-word reply, "No!!!"  Allen  characterized the cast as the "happiest, most relaxed professional family in television."

     Allen became known for the outrageous. He conducted a geography lesson using a map of the world in the shape of a cube. He opened a program by having the camera shoot from underneath a transparent stage. Looking down at the camera, Allen remarked, "What if a drunk suddenly staggered into your living room and saw this shot?"

     Although Allen won some of the ratings battles with Sullivan, he ultimately lost the war. In 1959, NBC moved The Steve Allen Show to Monday nights. The following year, it went to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for a 14-week run. In 1961, Allen renamed the program The Steve Allen Playhouse and took it into syndication, where it ran for three years.