THE SILVER LINING
by Joe Dungan

When the six broadcast networks announced their fall schedules at their annual unveiling for advertisers in New York in May, the most notable development was what was not being developed: sitcoms. The networks announced a grand total of 38 new or returning half-hour sitcoms on their schedules, down from 48 just one year earlier. Veteran hits Frasier, Friends, and The Drew Carey Show completed long runs, while Everybody Loves Raymond is likely in its last year and others such as Will & Grace and That '70s Show are aging. Meanwhile, reality TV is on the upswing; 15 reality series are slated for the networks' fall schedules, up from only 6 last year.

All of this has left industry observers and media critics decrying the present state of sitcoms. "[I]t became strikingly clear that the network situation comedy was in as bad a state as it has been in more than 20 years," wrote The New York Times' Bill Carter after the May announcements. Comedy Central President Doug Herzog called sitcoms "old-fashioned," adding, "There's a whole generation that they don't speak to at all." In addition to the relatively new and far less expensive reality genre taking root, the sitcom is also being elbowed out by the police procedural drama, which has become such a network staple that Law & Order and CSI have spawned entire franchises.

Seven sitcom writers of various career strata spoke to Written By to share their thoughts on the current sitcom trend and how they're adapting to life in television in light of all this not-so-funny news.

In 1996, Douglas Lieblein parlayed a writers' assistant job on Fox's Partners into an assignment, which begat a series of stints on several sitcoms, including Getting Personal; Yes, Dear; and Run of the House. At press time, he was between meetings.

Joe Dungan: As you go from job to job over the years, has it been harder to get work?

Douglas Lieblein: Yes and no. Whether there are 30 jobs and you don't get one or there are four jobs and you don't get one, it is the same kind of horrible blinding white panic. But on the other side of that, any time another writer comes to me and says, "What's the secret to you working?", I say, "Persistence."

Is that true of the current climate as well?

You know, this climate is really no different than two years ago. We took a big dip two years ago, then they made more pilots last year and the year before, and this year they're back to that dip. And you know what, truth is, it only takes one show. If, in the next six months, the new Friends shows up on television, it will not take long for executives to jump on the bandwagon.

Two or three years ago, the studios basically put a moratorium on those huge development deals. The elite fifty or hundred writers would get these big million-dollar overalls, and just develop all year. Now, they stop making new ones, those old ones are running out, and their new overalls are "showveralls"; you work on a show while you have your overall. So basically, those elite few have new overalls where they not only develop but they have to work on shows. So that puts those elite back into the workforce. So everything pushes down. All those co-executive producer jobs are now filled by those elite writers who are available in the workforce. Who would you rather hire?

There are literally--and this is a guess--400 or 500 fewer jobs this year than four or five years ago. It is a staggering number.

Would you consider working in animation or reality TV?

Absolutely. To survive today I don't think you can have a big ego. For example, I'm going in to pitch a kids' show to [a cable channel] that I would happily do for five years. But the sad truth is I won't get it because there are probably fifty other writers in my position who used to work on network television who are pitching to [the same cable channel].

Is this the end of the road for sitcoms?

I would hope that it's not. I'm betting it's not. I believe it will come back. I cannot imagine that we're done with half-hour television. For crying out loud, Shakespeare wrote how many plays?

Thirty-seven.

Out of thirty-seven of them, fifteen of them were comedies! Even then you couldn't hold an audience without jokes.

Jeny Quine made the leap from receptionist to writer while working for Tony Danza's company, where her spec landed her a staff writer position on The Tony Danza Show. Since then, she's written for MTV's Now What? and UPN's Grown Ups. Between staffing seasons a few years ago, she got her first job in reality television at Nash Entertainment, which has led to numerous other reality TV jobs.

What has been happening to sitcoms over the past several years?

Jeny Quine: I think part of it is purely economic, of course. Reality shows are cheaper to produce--even in success, because you don't have the cast of Survivor banding together and asking for a million dollars. Plus, I guess audiences are just kind of getting tired of the sitcom. I think it's a genre that maybe has passed its peak and I think you see some new things emerging like Curb Your Enthusiasm. That seems to be a little fresher.

How have you been adapting to the continuing shortage of sitcoms?

I just take whatever job they offer me. (Laughs.) I haven't given up on sitcoms. But in the meantime I think the most important thing is staying as adaptable as possible. I feel lucky that I got a foot in the door in the reality business because now that is an option for me. And I'm lucky that I got an opportunity to write stuff for kids. You have to be a jack- or jill-of-all-trades because there aren't enough sitcom jobs to go around.

The smell of desperation is definitely in the air, let's put it that way. When all my friends are calling me begging me for my reality show job if I don't take it, you know things are bad.

What's in your future?

A little bit going with the flow of the landscape. I kind of need to take whatever comes my way but I would like to create a show. Maybe I kind of have to wait and see what the new climate is because clearly the old-style sitcom is probably not going to be what gets me there and maybe pitching a hybrid show is not a bad idea.

Vincent Brown spent last season observing the writers' room and the set on Malcolm in the Middle . In June, he got his first staff job on Crazy for You, a midseason replacement for NBC.

How did you go from observing on Malcolm to a staff writer job in just a few months?

Vincent Brown: The writers I met on Malcolm were incredibly helpful to me. Plus, I wrote another spec just to have another fresh spec for staffing. Now, in December of 2003, I was a finalist in the Disney Fellowship, but that was in drama.

So at that time you were thinking, "I'll go anywhere there's work"?

Of course. I had been wanting to get in sitcoms, but I'm a writer. I'll write. I was thinking, "Well, if there aren't as many sitcoms as there used to be, I'll just write something else." But I didn't write a procedural.

So you're the one.

And I continued to have meetings and I met on several different projects, which was incredibly gratifying and then I got a couple offers. Basically, I just shut down and did not listen to anyone who was telling me that there was no work and that this was going to be a very tough year. And luckily my agent never said that to me. My agent was just like, "We're going to do it. That's all there is to it." And I just thought, "Okay, great." Because I think if I had thought about how tough it was, I just don't know if I would have been able to go on as many meetings and try and actually focus on the meetings.

Why do you think sitcoms are on the decline in the last few years?

Some of it I think has to do with familiarity. With sitcoms you want to be familiar with the characters so you can just roll with them. For some reason it's a little harder to be familiar with them for me--not even as a professional but just as a viewer. It seems like shows might be on and then they might be off instantly before you really had a chance to decide if you liked them or not.

Do you think sitcoms are dead?

I don't. I mean, obviously I wish both as a viewer and as a professional there were just more comedies that were really great, but there are still ones that I think are really funny that I'm rooting for. And I feel incredibly lucky to be on this show because as it's unfolding I'm thinking, "Wow, this is definitely a show I would watch."

Chip Keyes' sitcom résumé dates back over two decades, with writing and producing credits for numerous shows including Newhart, Gimme a Break!, The Hogan Family, Perfect Strangers, and Something So Right. In recent years, he has had occasional freelance assignments in addition to developing pilots and writing fiction.

Why do you think the sitcom landscape is changing?

Chip Keyes: I think it's a congruence of events. It is reality TV, it is ageism, it is cronyism. When I was an executive producer I would read a couple of hundred writers for staffing and I don't think that's happening. I think people are hiring their friends more. I have done that as well, but I think sometimes that's all that's happening.

Also, every TV season I'm watching young writers making the same mistakes we made fifteen years ago, some of which might be avoided if you had somebody who'd been there before--if not running it, then as an advisor. I have no grudge against young writers. I was one. I understand the value of that and the strength of that. I don't want to negate youth and raw talent and fresh ideas, but craft is important as well, a skill one generation of writers can pass on to the next, if only so they don't have to reinvent the wheel every time out. I think a lot of young talented writers are getting thrown in over their heads--sink or swim and a lot of them sink.

And I understand the success of reality TV. I think it's a phenomenon. I don't think it's ever going to disappear totally.

Did you get meetings this staffing season?

No. I think fifteen years ago, a writer my age and with my experience would have been able to subsist on the occasional freelance assignments or the occasional sold pilot scripts. But often today, you cannot even get your material read, much less get a meeting from it. The gatekeepers look at your résumé, not your writing.

Do you think comedies are dead?

No. I'd been here a few years in 1984 when all three network heads declared the sitcom dead. Most of the comedy writers I knew were speccing Love Boats. The conventional wisdom said that was where comedy was going. It was going to be Love Boats, Fantasy Islands, hours of three stories interwoven, and then Cosby hit the scene. And then you had a boom. It always changes.

Cynthia Greenburg broke in as a writers' assistant for many shows, then worked on a pilot in 2001, Me and My Needs, with the late Judy Toll. This led to work on What about Joan? and Less than Perfect, where she has recently begun her third season.

How did you get staffed on Less than Perfect?

Cynthia Greenburg: I was helping out on the pilot and when they got the pick-up they hired me, which was really nice. Really nice. But most importantly I liked the show. That was the thing. The show I helped on and liked was the one I got hired for.

You came along at a time when sitcoms were declining yet you were seemingly employed the whole time. What do you attribute to that success?

The producers from Me and My Needs and I had developed a good relationship. They were working with Terri Minsky, whom I really admired and things fell into place. Not to discount the support I had all along when maybe there was an incline in sitcoms but I was sort of on the decline.

Why do you think sitcoms are on the decline?

Many reasons. America's fascination with reality shows, micromanagement of writers in development, advertisers who should realize there's a world out there besides men 18 to 34.

Do you think the sitcom is dead?

People will desire alternatives to reality, et cetera, and suddenly something like the "dinosauric" sitcom will seem fresh if done well and intelligently. What's hopeful is it's been repeatedly proven on cable people watch different types of programming. The dam will break when one network takes a chance and does something that's not a knock-off, not geared toward the lowest common denominator, and not the same formula, but is the real deal in terms of a visionary getting a chance to create a mesmerizing world, the one big hit everyone's waiting for. It may not be the typical sitcom, it might end up being the prototypical sitcom. All I know is it's gonna be a comedy and it's gonna be something great. It just takes one.

After a stint as a comedy development executive at Columbia Pictures in 1989, Mark Amato moved to writing for a variety of comedy, drama, and animated series, including Pauly, Earth: Final Conflict, Men in Black, Mutant X, and Son of the Beach. Most recently, he is returning for a second season on the Sci-Fi Channel's CGI series, Tripping the Rift.

Why are the broadcast networks are shying away from sitcoms?

Mark Amato: I think a lot of it is fear-based because what happens is when there's not a bona-fide hit out there where you could say, "Hey let's do a show just like that," then there's a knee-jerk reaction: "Let's find something else." And right now they have something else, which is reality. But clearly that's not a long-term business solution because in syndication these won't succeed.

HBO is suddenly looking for traditional comedies.

They're geniuses. With the networks more reluctant to take chances, HBO is taking the bull by the horns and diving right in. I think whatever ends up finally working its way through the pipe at HBO isn't going to be something that can't be aired on any other network in terms of language or nudity or anything like that. I think it's going to be something with a strong point of view.

How are you coping with the sitcom shortage?

I think things happen for a reason. In 2000, I got handed this sci-fi thing, a 175-page script. And they desperately needed it to be turned around, page-one rewrite, in three weeks, so they could green-light it to be shot. And because of doing that, it was sort of like, "Okay, now I guess you can write sci-fi." My entire career, it's always been trying to figure out, "Well, what does he do?" It started out on America's Funniest People: "Oh, he's punchy. He's good for the wraparounds." Then I worked on Pauly: "Oh, he's big and broad." Then it's sci-fi: "Oh, he's a sci-fi writer." It's trying to figure out who you are based upon your credits. The only prerequisite for me has been passion for the material. Drama, sci-fi, comedy, animation, whatever it is, I always look for an aspect of the material I love.

Sounds like you need a healthy attitude to survive.

That's it. Particularly now. A lot of my friends are out of work. And after a while their negativity sort of gets old. Once you go to the bitter place, really it's time to get a job as an ice cream man somewhere because that's it.

Are you personally worried about your career?

When I was in my twenties, I'd live and die by staffing season. Maybe I've been fortunate, but after a certain period of time I said I'm not going to worry about it anymore because something comes out of the woodwork--sometimes in the oddest of places. I've written everything from comedy to animation to sci-fi now. Maybe greeting cards are in my future. I just have the faith that something will happen. The bottom line is, I never got into this gig for the big bucks. I just love what I do. And to write on a show you're passionate about is pure bliss. If somebody said to me, "Mark, you'll make 32K next year but you'll be writing an Arrested Development, " I'd say, "Where do I sign?"

Bob Kushell has been working steadily since 1992. His writing and producing credits include The Simpsons, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Grounded for Life, and, most recently, Hidden Hills and Malcolm in the Middle. Presently, he is developing pilots for NBC.

Why are sitcoms disappearing?

Bob Kushell: I think it's like anything else. When there's too much of something, people ultimately get bored with it. But things go in cycles. I think that after this short respite--if quality sitcoms come on the air with characters and actors that they respond to--the genre will be revitalized again.

Do you think that if HBO finds something that works then the other networks are going to go after comedies again?

Yeah, it would be nice if it added fuel to the fire of, "Let's try this again. Let's really make a push for this again." It's not just difficult for writers, I also think the network executives are frustrated. Most everybody who's an executive right now came up in the time of sitcoms and those shows influenced why they want to do and be where they are. And I think they're chomping at the bit to restart it again. At least I see that in the executives who I'm dealing with, which is very encouraging.

It's harder to get single-camera shows pushed through, because they're so expensive to produce and, for some reason, the audiences aren't flocking to the quality single-camera sitcoms that are on the air. I don't know why. But I believe in the form. It's important not to forget shows like The Wonder Years and Malcolm . Those were huge single-camera hits. Wait a second! I think I just figured it out! To be a hit single-camera show, it has to be about a prepubescent boy! This is why I should run a network.

How has the shortage of sitcoms affected you personally?

The two-year deal I signed with NBC for this year and the following year was going to require me to consult on a show as well, but there were so few sitcoms on the air, they allowed me the opportunity to just strictly develop, which I see as a huge benefit--a fortunate situation for me because of an unfortunate situation for sitcoms.

Over the years, I've been very fortunate. But I've also been very talented. (Laughs.)

Off the record?

No that's on the record.