Sitcoms hibernating on family-oriented cable?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 3rd, 2008

Bill Brioux, writing for the London (Ontario) Free Press, offers a fascinating examination of the current state of the sitcom. It’s not dead, it’s hiding on Disney and Nick.

“Something is happening in comedy. It’s not hip to be funny anymore,” says Brent Piaskoski, creator of the made-in-Canada Family Channel series The Latest Buzz. “Edge has replaced jokes,” he suggests. It’s why Conan O’Brien gets more respect that Jay Leno, “who’s a human joke machine,” says Piaskoski.

If we catch his drift, Piaskoski is trying to explain his “banishment” (our word, not his) to family television. It is not true that edge has replaced jokes, but, to the veteran sitcom writers toiling for cable outlets like Disney and Nickelodeon, the death of the joke and the ascendance of snark would neatly explain their current predicament.

Something is always replacing funny– awkward is the new funny, edge is the new funny. Wry, arch and ironic have all taken a stab at replacing funny over the years. All of them failed, or will fail.

Let’s look at “respect” as measured by the number of zeroes on the paycheck. The human joke machine makes three times that of O’Brien. (Letterman makes more than either of them, but no one can agree on whether he is funny or edgy… and some folks maintain that he’s neither.)

(While we don’t find Leno wildly funny, his facility with a setup and a punchline is clear and it cannot be disputed that he’s going for the joke.)

We suppose that the tastemakers and the critics would have us believe that O’Brien commands more respect and that he is deserving of same.

But, we digress. It seems that sitcoms– half-hour shows that boldly go for the gag in rapid-fire fashion– are big with kids!

Edge has no edge over jokes in ‘tween TV. While not entirely an irony-free zone, shows such as Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana and The Latest Buzz score with kids by being about kids but also by going straight for the funny.

But such a formula (either geared toward kids or adults) is a tough sell to the nets because, as Brioux puts it, “savvy, jaded viewers tune out the seen-it-before genre.”

Television viewers are savvy and jaded? Pure fantasy.

Will this love of rat-a-tat/setup-punchline shows translate into a comeback for the sitcom as the tweens grow into teens and then into adults? It will be very interesting.

Some folks maintain that the adolescents will grow weary of the obvious jokes and eventually graduate to snark and sarcasm and eventually embrace The Edge. We predict that they’ll be leery of The Edge, that they’ll not abandon their love of the gag. (After all, The Edge is what Mom and Dad like. And, as we all know each generation utterly rejects that which the generation before it champions.)

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