International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

The situation comedy, or sitcom, has been a staple of entertainment media for decades. More than 900 have been on the air since 1947. Starting on →  Radio , it quickly became popular with audiences. With the advent of →  Television in the late 1940s, sitcoms migrated to the small screen, and it is these sitcoms with which most people today around the world are familiar. Content and neo-Aristotelian analyses of from 1 to 100 episodes each of approximately 800 situation comedies has led to the following understanding of situation comedies and how they work ( Taflinger 1996 ). A definition of situation comedy should look at each word of the name, starting with “situation.” There is a continuation from episode to episode of the same elements : (1) a regular group of characters who appear in all or almost all episodes and who maintain a continuing relationship to each other (e.g., husband and wife and perhaps children, siblings, co-workers, neighbors; (2) a group of settings used in all or almost all episodes in which most of the actions take place – for instance homes, workplaces, schools – and in which (3) the premise of the show is established ( Taflinger 1996 ). For example, the situation could be parents teaching their children how to live and behave in the world, or how doctors and nurses cope with being in a war zone, or how a man's reach exceeds his grasp, or how friends try ... log in or subscribe to read full text