US report highlights new hits

The genre was largely written off three years ago when long-running series including Frasier, Friends and Sex And The City all ended at the same time, prompting a flurry of press articles proclaiming ‘the sitcom is dead’.

However, a new report advising America’s smaller TV stations which network programmes they should buy the rights to repeat says comedy is back in vogue.

‘There's definitely a sitcom resurgence,’ said Bill Carroll, vice-president of firm Katz TV, which works with 350 TV stations.

His opinion was influenced by the successes of Two And A Half Men and Family Guy, which have been winning decent audiences since going into syndication in September.

A raft of new comedies available for reruns next year will be touted at the NAPTE trade fair in Las Vegas next week.

Among the likely hits highlighted in Carroll’s report is Chris Rock’s sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, which he said was ‘well-written and critically acclaimed’, and ‘is a very attractive offering for sitcom stations’.

And he concluded that My Name Is Earl and the US version of The Office have ‘unique audience appeal and will provide needed freshening to existing sitcom blocks’.

His suggestions, as reported in trade magazine Variety, also include House Of Payne – a sitcom about a working-class black family, not screened in the UK. The report noted its ‘solid performance’ on the TBS network, and said it had lots of syndication potential. Here is a clip:

Published: 22 Jan 2008