1997-98- the season that slaughtered the sitcom - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

waichingliu81 · 07-02-2011, 06:48 PM

The Season That Slaughtered the Sitcom
by Jaime Weinman on Wednesday, June 8, 2011 12:21pm

I was revisiting NewsRadio season 5, and on one of the commentaries, Paul Simms mentioned a season “where NBC had 18 sitcoms. So you can thank them for killing the multi-camera sitcom.” I checked, and discovered the season he was referring to was 1997-8. Though the Wikipedia schedule doesn’t apply to the entire year (NewsRadio was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday at some point, and shows rotated in and out of the Thursday slots), NBC did in fact have 18 sitcom slots that year: Monday through Thursday all had four sitcoms followed by a drama at 10, and there were two other sitcoms on Sunday. Now that’s what I call overkill.

The sense of a sitcom glut was increased by the fact that nearly all these shows were identical: four-camera sitcoms about young, affluent white people living in New York City. This description applied to the good ones (NewsRadio, Seinfeld, Friends) and the bad ones (almost anything airing after Seinfeld or Friends) alike. NBC’s overdose of comedy, combined with the fact that most of the comedies were the same and that the new ones weren’t in the class of Seinfeld/Friends/Frasier, made the network a joke and made it clear that they didn’t have much in reserve to replace Seinfeld. And this was Seinfeld‘s last season.

It was in a way the comedy equivalent of ABC’s decision, a few years later, to do Who Wants to Be A Millionaire every night. In drama, CBS is currently becoming a punchline for a similar reason, since they have the same type of drama on over and over. It’s taken longer for that strategy to become a problem (maybe because dramas are easier to schedule than comedies, which have to be paired off), but the failure of the Criminal Minds spinoff, Laurence Fishburne leaving CSI and the lower-than-expected numbers for Hawaii 5-0 suggest that the network might finally have passed the saturation point.

But back to comedy, 1997-8 also saw the collapse of the family comedy, also because of over-saturation, though of a more specialized type. ABC filled its TGIF lineup with clones of Sabrina, and CBS, which was trying to launch its own family comedy block, unveiled its own magical-person comedy, the legendarily terrible Meego. The CBS lineup never got off the ground; ABC’s TGIF brand was never able to fully recover from having three versions of the same show in one night.

The lesson is a simple and familiar one: TV networks can never resist copying their own successes. It works for a while – after all, NBC reacted to the success of Seinfeld by rolling out Friends and Mad About You. But 18 versions of the same thing is probably too much.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/06/08/t...ed-the-sitcom/

Reverend Jim · 07-02-2011, 08:04 PM

Mr. Television · 07-02-2011, 08:08 PM

Yep I've said the same thing for years. Friends killed the sitcom. It wasn't Friends per say but all the clones that came out during the mid to late 90's and most of them were junk. I'm a big fan of CBS but I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen to the crime drama if they aren't careful.

tiredmike59 · 07-02-2011, 08:40 PM

Same thing happened to the westerns and the game shows.

Mr. Television · 07-02-2011, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiredmike59

Same thing happened to the westerns and the game shows.

I wish it would happen to some of these reality shows. lol

tiredmike59 · 07-02-2011, 09:03 PM

Be patient,It will.

oz615 · 07-02-2011, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuck In The '70's

I wish it would happen to some of these reality shows. lol

As much as i would love for that to happen,it's unlikely to happen.Cheap production cost is the reason why.

Reverend Jim · 07-02-2011, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuck In The '70's

I wish it would happen to some of these reality shows. lol

benjamoon · 07-02-2011, 11:56 PM

This is a mistake that broadcast TV can't stop making....

"Friends" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" are two good examples of quality shows that had too many bad copycats. Same goes with "Lost" and "American Idol" (yes, "The Voice" is a hit and also not quite a copycat but remember all the flops back in the mid 2000s that were copycats?)

Maybe they're starting to learn their lesson though because we haven't really seen clones of "Modern Family" or "Glee" yet - even the upcoming "Smash" is reportedly quite different from "Glee"

ekkostar · 07-03-2011, 02:48 PM

Reality TV also isn't what it used to be. It used to be a genre full of dating and shock-genre stuff. Now it's just wasteful stuff custom built to sell tabloid magazines.

Goldilocks · 07-03-2011, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuck In The '70's

I wish it would happen to some of these reality shows. lol

Amen to that!!! I will celebrate when it does!! I'm surprised it hasn't happened already but I know reality TV appeals to the lowest common denominator when it comes to an audience.

megamanj2004 · 07-03-2011, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiredmike59

Same thing happened to the westerns and the game shows.

I remember when an episode of The Jetsons made a reference about there being too many shows about westerns and doctors.

The Mid-to-late '60s also had the Spy Drama craze as well and many of the sitcoms of the '60s-early '70s were mostly make-believe, fantasy-based sitcoms.

UMFaninMD · 07-03-2011, 10:20 PM

When a network finds a good thing they always try to reproduce it and what follows usually isn't good. That's going on right now with these reality shows about being on the job. You had L.A. Ink, then Miami Ink and now NYC Ink. There was Jersey Coture and Jerseylicious, trying to capitalize on the Jersey Shore success. The four or so shows about bakeries and there was even one about ice sculptors. There's two pawn shop shows on the air.

Now TLC has a reality show about a Hollywood nail salon. And I think, who in the heck wants to watch people throw tantrums and act like fools at work, especially if you're working and there's times you have to deal with your own work-related drama? All this overload, whether its sitcoms, game shows, reality shows, crime shows---after a while people will get tired and go look for different programming. That's probably why the scripted cable shows are doing so well, even though they write about similar themes, at least there is an attempt at some originality.

TMC · 06-04-2012, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuck In The '70's

Yep I've said the same thing for years. Friends killed the sitcom. It wasn't Friends per say but all the clones that came out during the mid to late 90's and most of them were junk. I'm a big fan of CBS but I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen to the crime drama if they aren't careful.

Speaking of which, around the time that Friends aired its final episode in 2004, I posted this article here:
The fallacies: 6 ways "Friends" hurt the sitcom

As far as CBS' attempt at during their own version of TGIF (dubbed the "Block Party"), apparently in hindsight, this could be considered a "Cadmean victory". In other words, although the block was canceled within a year, ABC releasing two shows (Family Matters and Step by Step, which broadcast their respective final seasons on CBS) caused what turned out to be irreparable harm (and fracturing the audience in the process) to the previously dominant TGIF line-up.

ajgenard · 06-04-2012, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TMC

Speaking of which, around the time that Friends aired its final episode in 2004, I posted this article here:
The fallacies: 6 ways "Friends" hurt the sitcom

As far as CBS' attempt at during their own version of TGIF (dubbed the "Block Party"), apparently in hindsight, this could be considered a "Cadmean victory". In other words, although the block was canceled within a year, ABC releasing two shows (Family Matters and Step by Step, which broadcast their respective final seasons on CBS) caused what turned out to be irreparable harm (and fracturing the audience in the process) to the previously dominant TGIF line-up.

Wow, that article is still a fascinating read 8 years after Friends has ended. While I wouldn't contribute the downfall of sitcoms solely to Friends' aweful cookie cutter imitators (and the half baked executives who green lit this sh*t), I would certainly lay a good portion of the fallout at their feet. It has become painfully obvious to everyone who knows TV history that sitcoms have never been the same since the show exploded onto the scene.

I hate to knock Friends because they themselves did nothing wrong and had a lot of originality. It's just really hard for me to sing praises to a show whose overbearing influence is still plaguing all of TV nearly a decade after it ended. Virtually every sitcom on the air right now is STILL carrying components of Friends to various degrees. Some initially great shows like The Big Bang Theory have been morphed into a subtle copycat. Now when executives say "broaden the appeal" they might as well being saying "more like Friends." Of course there are still shows to this day being green lit with the exact same premise like Happy Endings but are really poorly executed.

07-02-2011, 06:48 PM	#1
waichingliu81 debbie allen Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Dec 28, 2006 Location: london, england, UK Posts: 4,347	1997-98- the season that slaughtered the sitcom The Season That Slaughtered the Sitcom by Jaime Weinman on Wednesday, June 8, 2011 12:21pm I was revisiting NewsRadio season 5, and on one of the commentaries, Paul Simms mentioned a season “where NBC had 18 sitcoms. So you can thank them for killing the multi-camera sitcom.” I checked, and discovered the season he was referring to was 1997-8. Though the Wikipedia schedule doesn’t apply to the entire year (NewsRadio was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday at some point, and shows rotated in and out of the Thursday slots), NBC did in fact have 18 sitcom slots that year: Monday through Thursday all had four sitcoms followed by a drama at 10, and there were two other sitcoms on Sunday. Now that’s what I call overkill. The sense of a sitcom glut was increased by the fact that nearly all these shows were identical: four-camera sitcoms about young, affluent white people living in New York City. This description applied to the good ones (NewsRadio, Seinfeld, Friends) and the bad ones (almost anything airing after Seinfeld or Friends) alike. NBC’s overdose of comedy, combined with the fact that most of the comedies were the same and that the new ones weren’t in the class of Seinfeld/Friends/Frasier, made the network a joke and made it clear that they didn’t have much in reserve to replace Seinfeld. And this was Seinfeld‘s last season. It was in a way the comedy equivalent of ABC’s decision, a few years later, to do Who Wants to Be A Millionaire every night. In drama, CBS is currently becoming a punchline for a similar reason, since they have the same type of drama on over and over. It’s taken longer for that strategy to become a problem (maybe because dramas are easier to schedule than comedies, which have to be paired off), but the failure of the Criminal Minds spinoff, Laurence Fishburne leaving CSI and the lower-than-expected numbers for Hawaii 5-0 suggest that the network might finally have passed the saturation point. But back to comedy, 1997-8 also saw the collapse of the family comedy, also because of over-saturation, though of a more specialized type. ABC filled its TGIF lineup with clones of Sabrina, and CBS, which was trying to launch its own family comedy block, unveiled its own magical-person comedy, the legendarily terrible Meego. The CBS lineup never got off the ground; ABC’s TGIF brand was never able to fully recover from having three versions of the same show in one night. The lesson is a simple and familiar one: TV networks can never resist copying their own successes. It works for a while – after all, NBC reacted to the success of Seinfeld by rolling out Friends and Mad About You. But 18 versions of the same thing is probably too much. http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/06/08/t...ed-the-sitcom/

07-02-2011, 08:08 PM	#3
Mr. Television 22 Years at Sitcoms Online Forum Icon Join Date: Jun 06, 2003 Location: Somewhere you're Not Posts: 62,125	Yep I've said the same thing for years. Friends killed the sitcom. It wasn't Friends per say but all the clones that came out during the mid to late 90's and most of them were junk. I'm a big fan of CBS but I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen to the crime drama if they aren't careful.
	__________________ Sonny

07-02-2011, 11:56 PM	#9
benjamoon Bewitched Senior Member Join Date: Jun 15, 2000 Location: New York Posts: 1,450	This is a mistake that broadcast TV can't stop making.... "Friends" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" are two good examples of quality shows that had too many bad copycats. Same goes with "Lost" and "American Idol" (yes, "The Voice" is a hit and also not quite a copycat but remember all the flops back in the mid 2000s that were copycats?) Maybe they're starting to learn their lesson though because we haven't really seen clones of "Modern Family" or "Glee" yet - even the upcoming "Smash" is reportedly quite different from "Glee"
	__________________ My Blog: http://benjamonsterstv.blogspot.com/ My Site: peaktvdatabase.weebly.com My favorite TV shows: Bewitched, I Love Lucy, American Dreams, Mary Tyler Moore, The Office, Happy Days, The West Wing, Modern Family, Friday Night Lights, Friends, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, and Parenthood

07-03-2011, 02:48 PM	#10
ekkostar Coffee, Tea & Larroquette! Senior Member Join Date: Apr 16, 2005 Posts: 1,077	Reality TV also isn't what it used to be. It used to be a genre full of dating and shock-genre stuff. Now it's just wasteful stuff custom built to sell tabloid magazines.
	__________________ "All my sitcoms had an audience, with four or five cameras, so working this way has always been appealing to me." - John Larroquette A living legend, five Emmys and a Tony award! Your favorites could never...

07-02-2011, 08:04 PM	#2
Reverend Jim Member Forum Regular Join Date: Feb 08, 2009 Location: New York City Posts: 783

07-02-2011, 08:40 PM	#4
tiredmike59 Member Senior Member Join Date: Jun 05, 2010 Location: OUTLAW STATE {MO} Posts: 1,868	Same thing happened to the westerns and the game shows.

07-02-2011, 09:03 PM	#6
tiredmike59 Member Senior Member Join Date: Jun 05, 2010 Location: OUTLAW STATE {MO} Posts: 1,868	Be patient,It will.

07-03-2011, 10:20 PM	#13
UMFaninMD I love a mystery Senior Member Join Date: Apr 19, 2011 Location: Maryland Posts: 1,287	When a network finds a good thing they always try to reproduce it and what follows usually isn't good. That's going on right now with these reality shows about being on the job. You had L.A. Ink, then Miami Ink and now NYC Ink. There was Jersey Coture and Jerseylicious, trying to capitalize on the Jersey Shore success. The four or so shows about bakeries and there was even one about ice sculptors. There's two pawn shop shows on the air. Now TLC has a reality show about a Hollywood nail salon. And I think, who in the heck wants to watch people throw tantrums and act like fools at work, especially if you're working and there's times you have to deal with your own work-related drama? All this overload, whether its sitcoms, game shows, reality shows, crime shows---after a while people will get tired and go look for different programming. That's probably why the scripted cable shows are doing so well, even though they write about similar themes, at least there is an attempt at some originality.