Television comedy shows have changed significantly within the past few decades. Once they were more wholesome family entertainment and some would say this has denigrated into lowest common denominator television. Of course, broadcasters have to fit very different types of shows into their schedules and within the past 10 years the TV talent show, as well as TV reality shows have become more and more popular and seem to be taking over more and more of the schedules.
Where television comedy shows were the event of the week that everyone looked forward to and provided a talking point at work the following day, this has now been superseded by talent and reality shows. Not only do these types of shows get excellent viewing figures, because of this the broadcasters can charge advertisers more to place advertisements in the commercial breaks. Because these types of shows run for a longer running time than other TV shows, usually up to an hour and sometimes longer they provide broadcasters with the ideal opportunity to get more advertising revenue.
Of course, television comedy shows now make a pilot which may never be broadcast and only if they are lucky will they be commissioned to produce a whole series. Often this is done by an outside production company rather than produced in-house by the station. 20 or 30 years ago, television comedy shows were given a first series and if that series didn’t do very well, it would be axed. If successful it would be given a second series and maybe increase the amount of episodes within the series. It is crucial that with every series, the show manages to maintain its viewing figures, otherwise they stand the risk of being axed by the network. Although a well written and well produced show will often have no trouble keeping its viewers from one series to the next.
There is a vast difference in the comedy styles, production and values of British comedy compared to American television comedy shows. Whereas British comedy series, usually only run to six episodes, sometimes more, they will be 20 to 30 episodes in length in America. This is possible because American comedy series use a team of writers rather than individuals, but is also necessary for a show to have many episodes if they wish to be syndicated.
Television comedy shows in America, if they wish to be syndicated, need at least 100 episodes. Syndication means that it is sold to networks all over the country, what these networks prefer to do is show all these episodes back-to-back at a fixed time each day. Therefore they are showing the series in a much more rapid fashion than it originally was intended, this is useful because the viewer knows exactly when that show is going to be on, but it can be awkward for the company producing the show, because of the amount of episodes required.
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