http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121862
Overall, network-TV comedy has an ever-shrinking audience — and sitcoms have an ever-shrinking share of prime time, thanks to cheaply made reality TV. As USA Today’s Bill Keveney recently noted, “The broadcast networks [are airing] fewer than 20 live-action, 30-minute sitcoms, about half as many as five seasons ago. … No sitcom has finished in the top 10 since ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ in 2005.”
The article goes on to talk about how viral-videos are part of the problem as well as the writer’s strike.
Comedy, as Steve Martin says, is not pretty. But in a disintermediated economy, comedy with that kind of executive-suite overhead is, as a business proposition, not only not pretty, it’s hideously ugly.
