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Comedy Writing
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How Streaming Video and DVR Raise the Bar for Sitcoms

by | July 6th, 2011

I have no clue when my favorite television shows are on. Despite loyally following five or six different half-hour comedies over the past season, I have never actually turned on a television to do so. In fact, I don’t even own a TV — like many of my manically busy and digitally-incubated young brethren, I am perfectly comfortable catching up with my favorite shows using downloaded episodes or streaming video. For those more traditional than I, DVR and TiVo contraptions allow viewers to easily circumvent the time constraints of live television while keeping close tabs on their darlings of the tube. For audiences, this means less life-planning around TV programming — and it gives TV writers more freedom, too.

My viewing habits are no anomaly, either; according to this 2010 marketing study, only 41% of the television viewing done by 18 – 34 year olds is on live TV. The other 59% is a mish-mash of streaming video and recorded programs, which doesn’t even begin to account for those illegally downloading. This means that dedicated viewers have a variety of ways to catch every episode of the shows they follow, and it means that newly inducted viewers have more than ample opportunities to play catch-up at any given point within a season, allowing them to watch an entire series over the course of a weekend. This fundamental shift in expectation frees the short-form sitcom from the considerable burden of exposition. Writers of long-running comedies can now, more than ever before, realistically assume that their viewership is experienced and informed. They can play to the choir, and the long-term plot lines of short comedies have benefited as a result. READ MORE

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