What’s So Funny? Not the Sitcom

In a season of discontent with the situation comedy, people in the TV industry are once again referring questions to a higher source.

“For comedy to work, all the stars have to align. If 5% is off, it’s over,” says a network executive, during a conversation in which another adage is invoked, this one spoken in the 19th century, not by a network executive but by Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

Great sitcoms, the theory goes, are happy accidents--a magical convergence of good writing and good casting and fortuitous scheduling and less tangible things like dumb luck and who’s catering lunch. The argument has the beauty of absolving everyone concerned--writers, stars, network programmers, studio executives, restaurant cooks--from taking responsibility for the current climate. And in case you haven’t noticed, sitcoms are in the doldrums.

Like televised executions, two new shows have already been trotted out and canceled (NBC’s “The Mike O’Malley Show,” CBS’ “Work With Me”), and the start of November sweeps on Thursday brings with it votes of no confidence for others, new and old, including NBC’s “Suddenly Susan,” CBS’ “Love & Money” and Fox’s much-hyped “Action,” all of which have been pulled and/or preempted by their networks for lack of viewers. ABC’s equally hyped “Sports Night” is also rumored to be headed for a temporary benching, a move ABC declines to discuss. Even the sitcom foundations at NBC, “Frasier” and “Friends,” are cracking, their audiences down 10% and 13%, respectively, from last year.

“This is about the third death-of-the-sitcom knell that I’ve experienced,” says Chris Thompson, who in 1980 created “Bosom Buddies,” which co-starred a then-unknown Tom Hanks.

Today, Thompson is presiding over two new shows, “Action” and CBS’ “Ladies Man,” which are supposed to represent the two competing philosophies about contemporary sitcoms. “Ladies Man” follows a well-worn development path: Drop a sort-of name actor (Alfred Molina) into a boilerplate sitcom situation and hope he becomes a TV star. In its own, equally calculated way, “Action” stands for difference--a high-cost, single-camera comedy about a narrow subject, Hollywood, that features a morally bankrupt antihero and an R-rated approach to content.

“Ladies Man” is off to a slow start at CBS, while “Action” has been a gaudier flop at Fox, finishing last among the six broadcast networks in recent weeks, leading many to wonder if it will become the next victim in Fox’s collapsing fall lineup.

But if at least one of Thompson’s shows is on life support, he gives little credence to the ubiquitous “Is the sitcom dead?” question. These discussions, he notes, always last as long as the drought between hits. “There’s more laughs in a good half hour of television than in most $100-million movies,” he adds.

That doesn’t account for what one veteran TV writer terms the “prevailing attitude toward television comedy right now that it all sucks,” a sentiment presumably shared by both cranky critics and bored viewers. “Jesse,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Veronica’s Closet,” “Suddenly Susan,” “Love & Money,” “Two Guys and a Girl”--who can tell the difference anymore?

“If you were missing an actor from one of these shows, I don’t think you could describe them to the police,” says Leonard Stern, a longtime TV writer who created “Get Smart” and is currently working on a second edition of the book “A Martian Wouldn’t Say That,” a compilation of network notes to sitcom writers.

Networks Committing

More Money to Drama

Network executives have responded to the sitcom malaise by cutting the number of comedies they schedule (22 of 36 new shows ordered last spring were dramas, excluding UPN’s “WWF Smackdown!”) and committing more money to drama development; meanwhile, in comedy, the search has never been more urgent for “fresh voices” and “unique points of view,” to use two buzz phrases favored by executives. Audiences, meanwhile, are now composed of viewers who don’t care whether a show is on cable or the networks--who can sense an authentic point of view in a low-budget cable cartoon, “South Park,” and make it a cultural phenomenon.

At the very least, then, there is reason to hope that the well-dressed-pals-in-an-apartment-they-couldn’t-actually-afford era of sitcoms, spawned by TV’s last big hit, “Friends,” has run its course.

“When the American people clearly say they like something, we bash them over the heads with it for four years longer than they really liked it and anger them,” notes Conan O’Brien, who in addition to hosting a late-night talk show recently signed an agreement with NBC to develop shows for the network.

Take, for instance, NBC’s second-year show “Jesse,” which comes from Bright-Kauffman-Crane, the creative team behind “Friends.” NBC has its reasons for showcasing “Jesse,” not least a political one, since the producers are marquee suppliers for the network. Try as they might, however, the network can’t seem to foist “Jesse” on the public. Revamped and given its plum time slot, Thursday nights at 8:30 between “Friends” and “Frasier,” the show, starring Christina Applegate as a single mother, is enduring a death-by-clicker, spiking ratings for wrestling on UPN and the second half hour of CBS’ so-called “geezer drama,” “Diagnosis Murder,” starring Dick Van Dyke.

“The feedback I’m getting when I do development is [networks] want ‘Sex and the City.’ But what they really mean is they want something more real,” says Cindy Chupack, who is creating pilots for two networks, ABC and CBS, after stints writing for two Emmy-nominated series, CBS’ “Everybody Loves Raymond” and HBO’s “Sex and the City,” the latter a frank look at the lives of single women in New York City. “All of a sudden there’s a very low tolerance for something that doesn’t feel real, all the way down the line.”

“People just have to think harder and not be so interested in succeeding,” says Bonnie Turner, who along with husband Terry Turner created and executive produces Fox’s “That ‘70s Show” and NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun,” two shows that tweak the familiar sitcom model. “There are a lot of really smart comedy writers who are afraid to think. They don’t want to be in development and fail. Everyone is looking for the formula. And the formula is inside the comedy writer’s head. You have to bet on yourself, bet on your own mind, and jump.”

Turner can afford to be idealistic, since she and her husband created their shows under the aegis of the powerful Carsey-Werner Co., the production team behind “Roseanne” and “Cosby.” Likewise, Chupack’s development deal requires ABC and CBS to pay stiff financial penalties if they don’t produce her pilots.

‘Everything Is

So High Stakes’

Many writers currently sitting in offices dreaming up the next great sitcom don’t have that kind of protection from the often-dreaded network and studio influence on their scripts. And with every broadcast network but NBC now owned by a larger media corporation (pending government approval of CBS’ merger with Viacom), creativity has to navigate rougher seas. Nor is the independent writer-producer guaranteed a ticket to the game; the network-studio mergers is only narrowing the field of suppliers and the chance for a “fresh voice” to be heard.

Add to the consolidation the rising cost of producing shows, and risk-taking becomes that much more nebulous a mandate.

“Your ability to say, ‘Let’s try this,’ has been eclipsed, because everything is so high stakes,” concedes a longtime network comedy executive.

Some of the most unoriginal thinking, say critics of the development system, has come from so-called “hot” executive producers with the clout to try something new--writer-producer teams like Dan Staley and Rob Long, who since writing for “Cheers” have created four unremarkable shows, all apparently based on the assumption that working on “Cheers” gave them special insight into the mystery of hit-making.

And yet, an unconventional approach hardly makes “Action” or “Sports Night” inherently good sitcoms either. “Everybody Loves Raymond” is a highly rated, well-conceived show, but it couldn’t be set in a more familiar-looking sitcom world.

End of the Stand-Up

Comedy Boom

In Ray Romano, “Everybody Loves Raymond” has an increasingly rare commodity--a stand-up comic who performed in clubs long enough to develop a ready-made act for television. Today’s sitcom depression is due at least in part to the end of the stand-up comedy boom, a decade-plus era that produced Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen, Roseanne, Paul Reiser, et al. Their graduation from prime time has not given way to a new supply of fresh voices.

“There was a long lull in television history that allowed these comics to get 10 or 15 years of stage experience before they were plucked for sitcoms,” says Richard Baker, whose management firm, Messina-Baker, represents Drew Carey and Allen, among others. “With all due respect to young comedians, they’re just being plucked much sooner.”

They’re being plucked prematurely because today’s market has a lot of hungry mouths to feed--six broadcast networks, and cable TV, which is an expanding universe of original programming. Today, comedians don’t have to wait very long to hop aboard the development train, and writers can parlay two or three seasons on a successful show into creator status, even if they don’t have the tools necessary to run a successful show.

Seen in that context, then, the glut of unfunny shows has less to do with magic and mystery than with simple math.

“In real life there may be 20 people who can create and run sitcoms,” Thompson says. “And there are 60 [shows] on the air.”