The sitcom is back

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on March 13th, 2007

Who could have predicted it?

We could have. And we did. We won’t even bother citing the post. In the nearly eight years we’ve been cranking out this magazine, we’ve seen network executives and programmers and TV critics wring their hands and bemoan the demise of the sitcom… and say that the format’s dead (of course, they all have an alibi!) and each time, we point out how silly they are.

The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner is saying that the sitcom is back.

Comedy consumers rejoice: The television sitcom is showing signs of life.

The format has been battered on broadcast TV in recent years, with the number of sitcoms dropping by half since the fall of 2003. But with sharply lowered expectations, broadcasters are indulging in riskier shows — and a growing number of them are becoming hits among critics, if not in the ratings.

On Thursday, NBC will debut “Andy Barker, P.I.,” a private-detective spoof created by Conan O’Brien and Jonathan Groff, a former head writer for Mr. O’Brien’s late-night talk show. It joins a small coterie of relatively new, critically…

(if you’re not a subscriber, that’s all she wrote. We saw it in our copy of the WSJ that we got in the lobby of the Courtyard in Tyson’s Corner. We forgot to keep the article!)

It’s like a force of nature. Folks love to laugh. The sitcom will always be with us, will always be huge moneymakers for networks and will always be the favorite of TV viewers for as long as there will be TV.

Of course, the suits will come along and, acting as executioner and coroner, they’ll kill the sitcom, declare the genre to be played out. And they’ll talk about “the zietgeist” or the mood of the nation or how reality is where it’s at… and then, months later, they’ll roll out an eye-popping number of new sitcoms and we’ll all be happy again.

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