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Here are some classic Fred Allen barbs at officious network vice presidents, with partner/wife Portland Hoffa aiding and abetting...

PORTLAND: Your program was cut off last week.
FRED: I know. Was your mother listening?
PORTLAND: Yes. Mama says she'll never hear the end of your program.
FRED: People will get to like my program---no end.
PORTLAND: Why do they keep cutting your program off?
FRED: Who knows? The main thing in radio is to come out on time. If people laugh, the program is longer. The thing to do is get a nice dull half hour to make sure that nobody laughs or applauds. Then you'll always be right on time and all the little radio executives can send each other memos and be happy.
PORTLAND: Radio sure is funny.
FRED: All except the comedy programs. Our program has been cut off so many times the last page of the script is a Band-Aid.
PORTLAND: Why is everybody in radio always in such a hurry?
FRED: It's the network policy. A program is going along---the people are enjoying it---the program gets a little long---Zip! it's cut off the air. Then a voice says, "This is the National Broadcasting Company." This is very entertaining. People all over the country have been sitting by their radios all night just waiting so that every half hour they can hear some announcer with mink tonsils say "This is the National Broadcasting Company." Then another voice says, "The correct time is nine p.m." Now you know what time it is and to what network you are listening---but nothing is going on.
PORTLAND: Mama says radio is like a cuckoo clock.
FRED: Radio is like a cuckoo clock?
PORTLAND: Every hour, every day, you hear the same thing.
FRED: Some day the whole side of Radio City will open up---a vice president will fly out and say "Cuckoo!"---and that will be the end of radio.

PORTLAND: What does the network do with all the time it saves cutting off the ends of programs?
FRED: Well, there is a big executive here at the network. He is the vice president in charge of "Ah! Ah! You're running too long!" He sits in a little glass closet with his mother-of-pearl gong. When your program runs overtime, he thumps his gong with a marshmallow he has tied to the end of a xylophone stick. Bong! You're off the air. Then he marks down how much time he's saved.
PORTLAND: What does he do with all this time?
FRED: He adds it all up. Ten seconds here, twenty there. And when he has saved up enough seconds, minutes, and hours to make two weeks, the network lets the vice president use the two weeks of your time for his vacation.

(This, by the way, is the routine that provoked NBC to fade away from the Allen show the night he delivered the routine until the routine finished. The incident hit the newspapers running and Allen's audience poured so many letters of protest to NBC, so it is said, that the network actually issued a formal apology--and Fred Allen was never cut off the air again in the middle of a show. His famous ad-lib ability did often get him faded off the air at the end of his show, however; there are radio historians who believe "We're a little late, so good night, folks" was used more often by Fred Allen than by anyone else in radio history.)