Shaping US Television Comedy Series (and the Entire Genre). Sizes, Formats and Distribution Models

Digitalization, convergence and the proliferation of shows and platforms have changed television, with consequences for viewing practices, textual forms and production approaches. In the last few years, the growth of players like Netflix, Amazon, HBO and FX, US has turned television sitcoms and comedy series into a crucial experimental arena. The genre’s traditionally unstable borders have been further reshaped, as the various changes in models, formats, sizes, writing, production and distribution practices have subtly or radically altered how viewers are engaged through laughter, affect and other comedic devices. Several trends and trajectories have emerged in US TV comedy series to challenge the genre’s traditional traits (the half-hour format, the three-act structure, the standard episode length, the connection with viewers’ everyday lives) and to prompt several innovations in production and distribution. At the same time, these changes have profoundly altered these texts’ narrative and textual character and their impact on audiences, leading to the emergence – at the opposite ends of a continuum – of titles that fuse comedy with melodramatic elements or establish short-term narrative arcs that are completed inside a single episode or even a subset of it. With a wide range of examples from the latest US seasons, television comedy’s reinvention demonstrates how contemporary TV distribution methods and consumption practices can influence and reshape textual models, production routines, and established genre definitions.