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'King's' demise reflects state of TV comedy |
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Written by Phil Rosenthal, McClatchy-Tribune
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Monday, 26 March 2007 |
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On a Culver City, Calif., soundstage this month, Kevin James and the rest of "The King of Queens" crew taped the final episode of their nearly nine-year CBS run.
The episode is set to air this spring and, like the finales in recent years of "Friends," "Frasier" and "Everybody Loves Raymond," it will cause some to reflect on the health of the half-hour sitcom.
They will talk about how the networks increasingly have had trouble developing comedies with mass appeal for the last decade or so. They might point out that, as funny as newcomers "The Office," "30 Rock" and "How I Met Your Mother" are, the only sitcom in Nielsen Media Research's prime-time top 20 in overall viewership for this season is CBS' "Two and a Half Men." And, while averaging around 15 million viewers at No. 16, "Men" is already slipping with Monday's return of ABC's hit "Dancing with the Stars."
When "Everybody Loves Raymond" was ending its CBS run in 2005 as TV's top-rated comedy, series creator Phil Rosenthal — known in this columnist's home as The Other Phil Rosenthal — was asked so often about whether his show's exit from prime time spelled the end of sitcoms, he developed a stock response: "I say yes. In fact, I think it's going to be the end of laughing anywhere. And after that, smiling will soon go, too."
The Other Phil Rosenthal then would give his serious answer, that television is cyclical and once another hit comedy comes along, everyone will say, "Oh, look, comedy is back."
He wasn't worried.
But then why should he? According to a study released last week by media buyer Magna Global, "Everybody Loves Raymond" remains television's No. 1 comedy, even almost two years removed from its network run, by virtue of being tops in both syndication and on cable, to say nothing of DVD sales and rentals.
In fact, only one of the study's 10 most popular shows on TV was still airing on a network: "King of Queens."
It seems we're watching more comedy even as we're watching less on the networks, partly because there's so much more comedy available to us. Fourteen years ago, when the Nielsen prime-time top 10 included six sitcoms — "Roseanne," "Home Improvement," "Murphy Brown," "Coach," "Cheers" and "Full House" — there were less than one-third the number of comedy hours available to TV viewers than there are today, between the broadcast networks, syndication and ad-supported cable.
Never mind that the number of sitcoms on network TV, which peaked with 50 at the start of the 2003-04 season, was only 24 at the start of this season last fall.
Part of the problem is obvious to any veteran viewer: Most of the new shows don't compare well to the old favorites.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Emmy-winning work in CBS' "The New Adventures of Old Christine" is OK, but it pales in comparison to her Emmy-winning work in "Seinfeld," which still runs several times daily on cable and over the air.
Sarah Chalke is a lot more noticeable on NBC's "Scrubs" than she was during her four seasons as Becky Conner on "Roseanne," but a lot fewer people are seeing her on "Scrubs."
Brad Garrett's new Fox sitcom "'Til Death" has gotten a huge boost of late, thanks to its "American Idol" lead-in. But even then, it's not doing as well as the far funnier "Raymond."
Just last week, the networks showed advertisers their development slates, the herd from which they'll cull the new shows for next fall's schedules, set to be unveiled in May.
Who knows? Maybe we'll find something among the newbies we like even better than Chuckles the Clown's accidental death on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," or the Thanksgiving turkey drop on "WKRP in Cincinnati" or that episode of "Gilligan's Island" where they almost get off the island.
As for "King of Queens," even as it leaves CBS, its reruns air twice each weekday on TBS cable. It's tough to miss something that really isn't going away.
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ANCHOR RISING: David Muir, a New York-based correspondent who joined ABC News in 2003 as an anchor on its overnight launching pad, "World News Now," has been named anchor of ABC's "World News Saturday" and a co-host of its "Primetime" program.
Other "World News Now" alumni include Anderson Cooper, Aaron Brown and Kevin Newman.
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Phil Rosenthal:
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