Situational comedy has had a tough go of it throughout these later years of the streaming period, however, fortunately, linear TV strongholds like ABC will all the time be a house to sitcom giants like Quinta Brunson and Tim Allen.
Earlier this week, ABC kicked off its yearly slate of renewal bulletins with a straightforward one: Abbott Elementary, Brunson’s smash-hit sitcom in regards to the hard-working and eccentric workers of an underfunded Philadelphia public college, will get a sixth season on the published channel. Different mainstays, just like the seemingly immortal Gray’s Anatomy and the shock hit amongst teenagers The Rookie, earned one other 12 months on TV, as did one of many hottest and most-watched new reveals of 2025, Shifting Gears, Tim Allen’s newest sitcom about being cranky and conservative.
In the meantime, within the streaming area, it looks like the one sitcoms that succeed are long-concluded linear TV reveals, such because the ever-popular The Workplace (U.S.), and nostalgia revivals, just like the well-received King of the Hill Hulu collection.
Actually, since Abbott Elementary first proved that the sitcom style might proceed to evolve and succeed on this new media panorama again in 2021, the streaming world hasn’t produced a single authentic sitcom that’s captured greater than a distinct segment viewers for a few frustratingly quick seasons.
Positive, there have been loads of streaming comedies that broke the mildew, like Shane Gillis‘ serialized hit Tires and Tim Robinson’s bizarro initiatives, however a bona fide situational comedy, mounted or multi-cam, has been exhausting to come back by in any respect the highly effective streaming homes.
In the meantime, broadcast TV continues to crank out sitcoms to scratch each itch with precise double-digit episode counts per season. The destiny of the sitcom appears to be tied to the destiny of channels like ABC, CBS and NBC, which, from a enterprise perspective, is sensible – broadcast TV must pad out its schedule with extra than simply reruns of Superstar Wheel of Fortune, and it is a lot simpler to make massive batches of episodic tv, seeing because the units and costumes largely keep the identical and there may be really no restrict to the variety of weird, hilarious mishaps that may befall an interior metropolis public college.
The streaming giants are all the time looking for that one present that captures the eye of the complete market, be it a action-sci-fi hit like Stranger Issues or a low-brow, can’t-look-away actuality present like Love Island and its spinoffs. Since most of those reveals drop in full seasons and are consumed inside one weeklong binge, the episode depend would not actually matter, as long as the collection does one thing huge and attention-grabbing that may have the present trending on Twitter.
Sitcoms do not actually lend themselves to these dramatic, scandalous, meme-able moments that give the social media managers for these streamers sufficient repost-able content material to final the complete 12 months.
Broadcast TV and situational comedy has all the time been a match made in leisure heaven, however, as streaming continues to determine itself because the dominant distribution system, lately eclipsing cable and broadcast mixed in complete viewership, each broadcast TV and sitcoms are sliding out of the zeitgeist at an alarming fee.
Till streaming corporations develop a greater enterprise mannequin for turning authentic sitcoms into must-subscribe hits, we could by no means get one other Pals, Seinfeld or The Workplace (U.S.) that has the complete world tuning in and creating new inside jokes. The sitcom might turn into a distinct segment style, a relic of an period of TV lengthy since handed. However, as long as the dinosaurs in broadcast TV maintain making them, we’ll maintain watching them.
Nicely, a few of them, no less than – we really feel rather more at house at Willard R. Abbott Elementary College than we do in Tim Allen’s storage.
