Submitted by Paula-Abdul-Jabbar t3_123uepo in television
theyusedthelamppost t1_jdx51h4 wrote
I'd say that the sitcom format is too constricting to keep up with modern viewers' tastes and expectations.
In the 90s, it was easy for a network to pump out a sitcom that followed the procedural format because that it was viewers expected and were comfortable with. But now writers have a different bar to meet. There basically needs to be a serialized element to the plot, which makes it harder to fit things in a comfortable 24minute run time.
Only Murders in the Building is a great modern show that probably qualifies as a sitcom. But its main hook is its long mystery arc. Many of the jokes rely on callbacks to what happened 4 episodes earlier.
Poker Face is largely procedural, but it relies on longer run times and isn't focused on comedy, so it doesn't really qualify as a sitcom.
Sitcoms struggle because they just aren't easy to pull off in the modern streaming environment where audiences expect to consume content by binging whole seasons as a time.
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