English Comedy Sitcoms

In a market as vast and diverse as the US and Canada unquestionably there is extra room among the on air comedy arena for the quintessential British sitcom. It seems nevertheless that the key channels favour the US made kind and that the classic English sitcoms find themselves only shown as part of the schedules of the local PBS channels.

What causes this?

Well, as one would anticipate in any liberal economy such as the US, market elements play a part. More correctly, supply and demand. We should look a bit closer at these dynamics.

To begin with, on the demand side there are nearly 1.6M British people currently residing in either Canada or the USA, couple this with the indigenous taste for 'all things British' and it promptly becomes apparent that there is substantial amount of likely watchers that may be partial to tuning into quality old school English comedy. Also there are hundreds of Television channels on the North American continent with literally tens of thousands of hours of programming to be shown each and every day.

The problem then must be on the supply side, right? Broadly yes, it is not that there is a deficit of English comedy readily available, but that there is a deficit of English comedy in a format that is suitable for North American broadcasting. This is a fairly distinctive situation that is created by the non-commercial nature of the British domestic broadcaster, the BBC.

There is no question that independent channels in Britain such as ITV and Channel Four are today making some very fine 'britcoms' of the likes of 'Mr Bean' or 'Black Books' by way of example. The BBC comedy section however is and forever has been the most productive manufacturer of classic English comedy and given its stead as the domestic broadcaster of Great Britain, it is paid for through viewers licence fees, thereby doing away with with the need for commercial breaks. This implies that a typical English comedy is taped for a full half of an hour while the US or Canadian tv stations need shorter, 22 minute, productions to provide for commercial breaks.

Furthermore another 'schedule integration' technicality occurs to deter North American stations from screening English comedies. A usual US TV sitcom will be broadcast in seasons that normally consist of 20 episodes, while a regular English comedy is usually recorded for only six shows at a time.

While the US networks are not going to adjust their programming schedules anytime soon, the English comedy producers are starting to recognize the potential of the US and Canadian viewership, many are now offering DVD box sets of most classic British sitcoms in Region 1 format (that's US & Canada).