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Or maybe because they are less able to protect their works, there are fewer people being motivated to participate in the comedy (and as mentioned by sibling comment, fashion) industries?

The premise of copyright is not causing but promoting creation of works. Subtle but important distinction. Nobody said there would be no creation without copyright, just that there would be more with it.

There's seems to be quite high supplies of both comedy and fashion in today's world.

Before imposing a system of copyright to "promote" them, you'd want to be EXTREMELY fucking sure that a) the quality/quantity will go up b) you're fine with massive new amounts of money being siphoned into rent-seeking industries (legal, rights holding companies, etc) c) you don't create side-effects that actually decrease output and/or lower quality

There certainly aren't many good ones. And even if you don't care about the quality of comedy, any layman can compare the comedy industry to another industry that does have such protections, like, say, film or software, and see a huge gap.

Same with the fashion industry, where some people are trying really hard to bring copyright in despite the fact that it's much more profitable without it than the entire media industry.