British TV Taps U.S. Comedies to Tickle Ratings

American comedy shows, for so long seen by British TV executives as inferior to home-grown sitcoms, are being used as a key weapon to boost ratings.

Public service broadcaster Channel Four, which has a 10.5% audience share, has been at the forefront of the trend, snapping up comedy shows such as “Friends,” “Ellen” and “Frasier.” Last year, it paid $100 million to Warner Bros. for a package that included “Friends” and “ER.”

Channel Four, which first brought “Cheers” and “Roseanne” to British screens, is trying to emulate NBC’s “Must See TV” concept by building blocks of popular shows such as “Friends,” “Frasier” and “King of the Hill.” Mairi Macdonald, the executive responsible for buying programs for Channel Four, hopes to continue the trend with her recent purchase of “Ally McBeal.”

“We’ve made Friday nights an ‘appointment to view’ night on television,” she said. “Having a block of so many good sitcoms has helped us to persuade viewers to switch on Channel Four. The sort of people who watch ‘Friends’ are very valuable to advertisers--they’re young, upmarket and bright.”

Wella, the hair products company that sponsors the show, thinks so too. It may also have been influenced by research suggesting that many young, high-earning women are turned off by BBC sitcom hits such as the British version of “Men Behaving Badly,” which concentrates on the antics of two boorish beer-swilling men.

The BBC, which relies on its license fee for funding, still produces highly popular sitcoms, but during the last year, the number of American comedy shows on British commercial TV has rocketed. The most successful ones, notably “Friends,” have also helped to boost advertising revenue.

Until recently, U.S. sitcoms were not popular here. But British viewers with long memories look back fondly to shows such as “Bewitched,” “The Odd Couple” and “I Love Lucy” (at one time, a particular favorite of Prince Philip’s). More recently, “Cheers” and “M*A*S*H” both won cult audiences, but it is only in the last year that large numbers of viewers have started to tune into the biggest ever offering of American sitcoms.

Comedy shows, like major sports events, have become the subject of bidding frenzies. The satellite company BSkyB responded to Channel Four’s success with “Friends” by clinching a deal to show the latest series, together with “ER.” It now runs the two programs on Thursday night in what it describes as its “see it first coup,” and back to back with “Suddenly Susan,” “Veronica’s Closet” and “Mad About You.” Sky was also the first British channel to show “The Simpsons.”

Figures from BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board), which publishes weekly audience ratings, show that “Friends” (1.44 million viewers) was the second most popular satellite program at the beginning of January, after live soccer. “The Simpsons” (3.58 million viewers) and “Frasier” (3.12 million viewers) were among the most popular sitcoms on commercial TV in the same week of Jan. 11. In contrast, “Blackadder,” Rowan Atkinson’s long-established historical sitcom, attracted 5.53 million people to BBC2 (a cable channel paid for by viewers’ license fee).

Channel Four’s huge spending sprees have led to criticism that it is failing to fulfill its public service charter. But insiders at Channel Four argue that the advertising revenue generated by big attractions such as the Friday night “comedy zone” help to bankroll “more difficult” programs such as its well-respected, hard-hitting documentaries.

The broadcaster was set up 15 years ago to nurture home-grown talent and to serve minority interests. In its early days, and protected by a levy from the ITV network, it was able to indulge in esoteric programs such as a subtitled opera about Gandhi in Sanskrit that attracted 169,000 viewers.

A turning point came in 1990 when it was forced to sell its own advertising time and to give a percentage of revenue to Independent Television (ITV), then the only other commercial cable network. Last year, it outperformed the industry, and the Labor Government has agreed to release it from its obligation to ITV.

The BBC has also awakened to the fact that American comedy is capable of attracting followings. “The Simpsons” proved so popular with British audiences that the BBC went to great lengths to bring the show back as soon as possible after its first run, switching it from BBC1 to BBC2 and giving it a twice- weekly slot. It has also been showing “Seinfeld,” followed by “The Larry Sanders Show.”

Many TV critics now see American sitcoms as representing comedy’s cutting edge, while British sitcoms are criticized for being tired and safe by comparison. As one scriptwriter put it: “Americans appear to have discovered irony.”

Dick Fiddy, a scriptwriter and TV consultant for the British Film Institute, points out that the comparison is unfair since British audiences only see the very best of American sitcoms.

“Shows like ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Frasier’ are dripping with irony, but there are also some very bad American sitcoms.”

But there are very few good British sitcoms, and they are nearly all on the non-commercial BBC. A 6-year-old episode of the BBC sitcom “Only Fools and Horses,” which is seen as a classic British comedy, can still attract an audience of 10 million viewers (twice the number who usually watch “Friends”). But innovative comedy shows such as “Fawlty Towers” and “Monty Python” (both made by the BBC in the 1970s) are rarer today.

“In the ‘80s, the BBC was running scared because it was given a lot of hostile media coverage, and since then it hasn’t liked taking too many risks,” Fiddy said.

High production costs in Britain have also boosted American imports. A half-hour show can cost at least $244,500 to make in Britain, and there are fewer markets through which to sell the end-product as most British viewers still have access to only four or five channels.

The way that British sitcoms are put together also makes them harder to sell abroad. Whereas American sitcoms are devised by a team of writers who usually have a big say in the final production, their British rivals are usually written by only one or two people. The British writing team will turn out a mere six or seven episodes, while their American counterparts produce in blocks of 20 or more. Macdonald said it is simply good timing that some of the top shows on American television at the moment happen to fit in with Channel Four’s profile.

Others said that only the American system of script writing can consistently churn out the wittiest and best-paced comedies, while the British approach will produce the odd quirky hit.