Car in Every Garage; Sitcom in Every Cul-de-Sac

Newspaper article

By: David Carr

Date: April 2, 2006

Source: Carr, David. "Car in Every Garage; Sitcom in Every Cul-de-Sac." New York Times. (April 2, 2006).

About the Author: David Carr is a journalist employed by the New York Times, one of the nation's largest newspapers with a daily circulation of over one million copies. Carr specializes in articles that examine media issues.

INTRODUCTION

The sitcom is an entertainment format that has been popular in North America since the early days of commercial radio in the 1920s. Sitcom is a truncation of the term situation comedy, a device that in modern television is defined as a comedy production that relies upon recurring characters that are centered in a fixed environment, such as a home, workplace, or public institution. The storyline of a typical sitcom will often emphasize the features of day to day life as opposed to those surrounding a unique or unusual event.

The sitcom has been a staple of weeknight television programming in the United States since the inception of network television in the late 1940s. The history of the television sitcom in many respects mirrors the progression of American attitudes on a variety of social issues. The first long running American sitcom was "The Burns and Allen Show," where the featured performers George Burns and Gracie Allen reprised elements of their successful radio comedy programs in a made for television situation.

In the 1950s, the popular long running sitcoms "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Leave it to Beaver" symbolized many elements of "the American dream"—a pleasant, spacious home in the suburbs, a cheerful and lively family structure, and relative economic success. These programs enjoyed continued popularity through syndication long after their weekly production ceased.

Beginning in 1969, the sitcom was often at the leading edge of public debate concerning the changes being experienced in every aspect of an American society increasingly driven by the trends and the tastes of the Baby Boomer generation. "The Brady Bunch" was the first television show to deal with the dynamics of a blended family. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which first aired in 1970, was a groundbreaking sitcom that featured Moore's character as a single career woman in her thirties determined to advance herself in the then male-dominated world of television news production. The 1971 series "All in the Family" explored recurring themes of gender relations, race, and sexuality in ways that had never previously been displayed in the sitcom format. Such programs were both topical and enduring in their appeal to a wide segment of the American television audience.

The sitcom was taken in a new direction in 1989 with the creation of "The Simpsons", the first animated production to be aired in prime time. The "Simpsons" became the longest running sitcom in the history of American television.

The sitcom is not a format unique to American television. A number of British sitcoms were exported to the United States and achieved favorable ratings when re-broadcast, particularly on the national public television network, PBS. The most notable of these programs was the series "Fawlty Towers", produced in 1975. In contrast to the American sitcoms noted here, "Fawlty Towers" did not deal with pressing social issues; it was programming clearly intended as pure entertainment.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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SIGNIFICANCE

The sitcom has endured as one of the most popular forms of American television programming, to a large degree due to the ability of sitcom producers to remain at or ahead of the curve that constitutes American tastes and public opinion. As the newspaper article outlines, popular sitcoms in the 1990s often portrayed urban environments as the backdrop to the comedic storyline. The trend in sitcoms since 2000 has been the increased depiction of situation comedies set in non-urban centers.

Data available through the United States Bureau of Census confirms a demographic basis for the shift in the type of locales used as the setting for television sitcoms. Migration data collected between 2000 and 2005 confirms that while the population of the United States grew by over five percent during this period, the population of the largest American cities declined in total by over three percent. Virtually all of this migration occurred from the large cities to the suburban and exurban areas of the country, where it is estimated that as of 2006, almost fifty percent of Americans lived.

The suburbs are defined as the outlying and primarily residential area of a larger city; the exurbs are those regions situated beyond the suburban area, often free standing in terms of municipal services and structure and connected to the larger city through rapid transit systems. It is clear from the census data that the population of the United States is decentralizing at a faster rate than at any previous time in American history.

Programming such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Weed" are set in a suburban environment; the suburbs and their conceptual extension, the exurbs, are now more important to American society than in any other previous time. As with the earlier sitcom interest in social issues, the geography and the life associated with the fast growing suburban and exurban regions is now a sitcom feature. An incontrovertible truth of American television programming since the commercial inception of the media has been that successful sitcoms provide an American audience with a reflection of how America sees itself.

A significant distinction between the suburban sitcoms of an earlier generation, such as "Leave it to Beaver", and the modern offerings is the nature of the content. The 1950s and 1960s sitcoms that were set in suburbia presented a safe, conservative, and seemingly idyllic existence when contrasted with city life. There were no apparent social problems experienced by the characters in the earlier sitcoms. The modern productions usually portray suburban lifestyles as possessing the diversity and the often-dysfunctional behavior previously associated with urban living. In an indirect fashion, the sitcom continues to reflect a segment of contemporary American living as it has always done.

The significance of the increase in attention paid by the producers of sitcoms to the suburban setting is likely to influence American perceptions about their own country's composition for an indefinite period. According to the A.C. Neilson Company, the average American adult watches over four hours of television per day. As reality television shows of various types and crime or justice themed shows dominate televi-sion ratings, the sitcoms are by default one of the few types of mainstream television that seek to depict the environment in which some Americans actually live; the sitcom is the closest portrayal to "real life" that a viewer can find in popular network programming.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Dalton, Mary R. and Laura R. Linden, ed. The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Marc, David. Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture (Second Edition). Malden, Massachusetts: Black-well, 1997.

Morreale, Joanne. Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader (The Television Series). Syracuse, New York; Syracuse University Press, 2002.

Web sites

Washington State University/Edward R. Morrow School of Communication. "Sitcom: What it is, How it Works." 2005 〈http://www.wsu.edu:8080/∼taflinge/sitcom.html〉 (accessed July 27, 2006).