Sitcoms Aren't Dead, They're Just Playing Possum

The sitcom isn’t dead; it’s just in a cryogenic sleep. Everyone wants to pronounce it dead, stand over it's corpse, saying that people don’t want to watch sitcoms any more, but they are wrong. People don’t want to watch unfunny sitcoms any more. People would LOVE to watch sitcoms again, if they are truly funny.
Think I’m wrong? Okay, smarty pants, why are the number one rated syndicated shows all sitcom re-runs? Because people want to laugh. That’s why more people are getting their news from “The Daily Show with John Stewart”…it’s much funnier than “World News Tonight”. The most watched videos ion YouTube aren’t dramas. Lots of blockbuster movies are comedies. People flocked to see “Wedding Crashers” and “40 Year Old Virgin” because comedy, when it’s done well, is a gift. It uplifts you, takes you away from your problems and gives you a joke to tell around the water cooler the next day.
The reasons sitcoms are sleeping are many. Cheaper to produce reality TV, network executives too timid to give a show time to develop (ever watch the first season of “Friends”? It was terrible. I only watched the credits so I could hear the catchy song. But it hung on and became a great show), and a dearth of original thinking. The last one is the killer. Yes, sitcoms are, and should be to a slight extent, formulaic. I said formulaic, not clone copies. Today, if a sitcom does become successful, it’s duplicated so many times that the dead horse isn’t just beaten but completely pulverized. The truly great and memorable sitcoms were both formulaic and original at the same time.
Is there nothing original out there? Sure there is. The BBC puts out plenty of successful comedies, which we try unsuccessfully to copy here. And there are literally TONS of writers out there with ideas (Contact me if you want some scripts and I know a lot more writers with shows as well.). Some may not be great, but I bet if you pan through enough, you’ll strike gold. And we need it. It’s a pretty unfunny time right now, with the war, the economy and elections coming up. So we need sitcoms to help us through a rough time. NBC has only one new sitcom in it’s 2007-2008 season lineup. It’s not enough. We need the funny stuff and we need it now!