Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era

Chapter 1: Introduction

S [1] Introduction igmund Freud writes at the beginning of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious that two reasons exist to study humor. One is “an intimate connection between all mental happenings.”1 The other: “A new joke acts almost like an event of universal interest; it is passed from one person to another like the news of the latest victory” (p. 15). Two no­ tions are important in this latter reason—“person to person” and “news of the latest victory.” In studying the history of cul­ ture, history (as well as culture) must be explained. The processes of social interaction and change are important. Thus, as Freud and many others note, descriptions and expla­ nations of the circulation of cultural discourses are worth studying. For example, popular knowledges and social life are filled with materials from entertainment media. In the area I will be examining—several television sitcoms—I could turn to a most recent example, Seinfeld. This program has popularized many catchphrases such as “soup Nazi,” “double­dipper,” the 1 Introduction / 2 “yada­yada­yada” conversation filler, the euphemism “master of his domain,” and others. Even if one doesn’t watch the pro­ gram, it is difficult to evade Seinfeld’s discursive impact. Figuring out why some programs and movies produce a widespread cultural awareness of their fictional worlds would be a great achievement, but an impossible one. However, de­ scribing parts of the processes by which some television pro­ grams became extremely noteworthy is at least a contribution toward this broader research question. My focus in this book is, Can we explain the phenomenon of the unusually popular TV sitcom within the contexts of American entertainment media? One of the most powerful sites for both discourse creation and discourse circulation is the American television situation comedy. In the medium of television, the sitcom has proven to be the most popular genre. Year after year, sitcoms appear in the top­ten ratings. Network executives and television critics have attempted to explain this. Among the answers suggested have been that the half­hour format fits the audience’s atten­ tion span; situation comedies can reflect rapidly the interests of the contemporary audience; and the humor of sitcoms flat­ ters viewers who feel superior to the sitcom characters or identify with their plights. These and other suggested answers I will review below, but while all of these explanations are likely part of the story, none of them—or even all of them to­ gether—can quite explain a second phenomenon about TV sitcoms. In the history of American television, breakaway hits in the ratings are most likely to be sitcoms. By the term “breakaway hits” I mean that the ratings for the shows sig­ nificantly exceed those of their second­ or third­rated (or even Introduction / 3 lower) competitors; the programs are “ratings busters” or in Hollywood movie terms “blockbusters.” These programs are constituted somehow as more than routine programs. “Least objectionable programming” (LOP) is an industry theory about why people pick what they want to see—when they want to watch TV, they choose the LOP channel. This hypothesis about viewers probably covers a great deal of the time they spend with the TV. However, the blockbuster phe­ nomenon suggests something more than LOP is occurring. Ratings­busting programs are garnering audience attention beyond normal viewing behaviors, evidenced by the disparity between their ratings numbers and those of the average suc­ cess. We are familiar with individual instances of such audi­ ence focus—the season opening for the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode of Dallas, the miniseries Roots, the final show for M*A*S*H, the annual Superbowl game. These and other in­ dividual television moments become American mass events, authenticating the metaphors of television as a national hearth or a global village. Thus, studying how a program, or in this case four sit­ coms, could weekly achieve the repeated semblance of this group experience and focus is important for understanding how mass media institutions and American audiences inter­ relate. The four blockbuster programs are The Beverly Hill­ billies, All in the Family, Laverne & Shirley (with Happy Days), and The Cosby Show. While the theoretical and crit­ ical explanations often provided for the popularity of sit­ coms can account for the wide appeal of the shows, it is necessary to add historical and institutional factors to un­ derstand the ratings buster.2...