Why so little English Comedy on US Television?   by Steven Browne

In a market as great and varied as America unquestionably there is more opportunity among the TV comedy genre for the old fashioned British sitcom. It seems nonetheless that the mainstream stations prefer the US made variety and that the classic English sitcoms find themselves relegated to the local PBS stations.

Why is this?

Well, as one might anticipate in any liberal economy such as the USA or Canada, monetary considerations play a role. More precisely, supply and demand. Let's look in a bit more detail at these factors.

To start with, on the demand size side there are very nearly 1.4M British people presently residing in either America or Canada, add to this the indigenous liking for 'all things British' and it rapidly becomes evident that there is significant quantity of possible viewers that might be partial to tuning into fine old school English comedy. Also there are many many TV channels on the North American network with many tens of thousands of hours of programming to be broadcast each and every week.

The problem then has to be on the supply end, right? Loosely yes, it is not that there is a deficit of English comedy readily available, but that there is a shortage of English comedy in a format that is appropriate for North American television. This is a quite unique situation that is brought about by the non-commercial manner of the British national broadcaster, the BBC.

There is no question that autonomous TV stations in the UK such as ITV and Channel Four are today producing some very fine 'britcoms' of the likes of 'Mr Bean' or 'Black Books' for example. The BBC comedy department however is and constantly has been the most fertile manufacturer of classic English comedy, and given its position as the national broadcaster of Great Britain it is funded through viewers licence fees, thereby doing away with with the necessity for advertising breaks. This implies that a conventional English comedy runs for a full 30 minutes while the American or Canadian broadcasters require less lengthy, 22 minute, sitcoms to enable ad breaks.

Furthermore another 'schedule integration' problem occurs to deter North American stations from screening English comedies. A normal US TV sitcom will run in seasons that typically are made up of 20 shows, whereas a standard English comedy is usually filmed for only six episodes at a time.

While the North American networks are not likely to adapt their broadcast plans anytime soon, the English comedy makers are starting to recognise the opportunities of the US and Canadian markets, many are now producing DVD box sets of most well known British sitcoms in Region 1 format (that's US & Canada).