No More Shitcoms Please!!!!

While they're looked down upon by cinefiles, I'm a sitcom guy, and nobody's railed about the absolute shittiness they've stewed in for two decades. Here's a great article in New York magazine HERE re: a resurgence of the sitcom, as led by Modern Family and a new vista freed from the "goofy schlub husband with hot wife/sexy group in Manhattan trying to avoid fucking each other" nexus:

This is not to say that the creative process in TV is entirely without merit: Like almost any commercial product, it lives somewhere on the axis between commerce and art. And right now it’s more about art than commerce... Ironically, what’s been bad for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW is largely good for viewers, as programmers no longer need to reach 15 million people in order to be successful and instead can focus on what will please a more niche audience of 5 million to 7 million, usually about what’s needed these days to get your network show renewed. To be sure, the changes in the business have given rise to some capitulation: e.g., NBC’s late-night debacle and a procession of super-nonchallenging studio game shows like The Marriage Ref. But lowered expectations financially allow higher expectations creatively, as the middlingly rated, very funny 30 Rock shows.

Meanwhile, the growing ratings and long-standing economics of the cable networks (cable operators pay hundreds of millions for carriage, which to date is not the case for broadcast networks, a nonsensical vestige of the medium’s evolution) are letting more and more of them underwrite substantial programming. Who would’ve guessed a decade ago that some of the best scripted programming on the air would be on FX or AMC (home of Mad Men)?