Networks looking for recession-era laughs (LAT, TW)

By Nancy Tartaglione

Given the nation's economic doldrums, networks are looking to cheer audiences up with a few laughs next season. The Los Angeles Times reports today that of 71 scripted pilots in contention for slots at the five networks, 33 are half-hour comedies. Meanwhile, as The Wrap.com reports, a slew of reality and scripted TV shows featuring 'real' people coping with layoffs and working class life are in the works.

In a shift that fits these economic times, 19 of the 33 half-hour comedies gearing up are multi-camera formats - shows taped before a live audience and enhanced by laugh tracks.

Once the dominant format, multi-camera sitcoms had begun to disappear with the belief that single-camera comedies allowed for more freedom. Today, only CBS airs multi-camera sitcoms.

"The industry had been moving away from multi-cameras out of a sense that other formats offer more creative freedom," Jamie Erlicht, president of programming at Sony Pictures Television told the LAT. "But there's room for both and there's a real appetite in these economic times for the tried and true multi-camera format."

Sony is behind 10 of the comedies under consideration this pilot season. A year ago, Sony commissioned a study to determine how a change in government or the economy could affect television habits and concluded that the pendulum would swing away from dramas.

"Post-9/11, reality TV was very, very fresh to the audience and took up a lot of the space that comedies did," Fox president of Entertainment Kevin Reilly told the LAT. "Right now, people are angry. That's where comedy historically has come into play - when you need someone to voice something in a way that you can hear it."

ABC, according to executives, wants to invigorate its family comedy brand. Half of ABC's 14 comedy pilots are multi-camera.

NBC is producing five comedy pilots, including two traditional multi-camera sitcoms.

"We love that genre and we would have made more but we just didn't have as many strong multi-camera scripts as we did single-camera," NBC President of Primetime Entertainment Angela Bromstad told the paper. "When you look at what's working and what is standing in a very crowded environment, the multi-cameras on CBS are doing very well and prove that it's not a dying format."

One factor moving the networks toward sitcoms is cost. Because a half-hour single-camera comedy costs almost as much as a one-hour show to produce, it makes sense to gamble on more sitcoms in lean financial times, Reilly told the LAT.

"It's a healthy and good shift in perspective," said Warner Bros. Television President Peter Roth. "All industries, including our own, are looking at costs more carefully and diligently, with greater scrutiny than ever before."

Meanwhile, The Wrap.com reports that a bevy of reality and scripted shows dealing with such recession-era subject matter as layoffs and working class life are in the works.

From comedies like ABC's "Canned," about a group of friends who all are fired on the same day, and an untitled Kelsey Grammer pilot about a Wall Street tycoon forced to stay home, to Fox's "Millionaire's Club" about a group of people who come up with get-rich-quick schemes to change their lives, the networks are bringing recession entertainment to the living room.

"On some level it is inevitable because the economy is so omnipotent in our lives that to do any kind of sitcom or drama it should be close to reality," Howard Rosenberg, the former Los Angeles Times TV critic and professor of television studies at University of Southern California, told TW.

Even reality TV will get more real, says TW citing Mark Burnett's new "Shark Tank," in which entrepreneurs will compete for financing and Fox Reality Channel's "Househusbands of Hollywood" which follows five men who stay home while their entertainment-industry wives bring home most of the bacon.

However, none of the CW's six pilots in development directly relate to the recession. Rather, the network is ordering more escapist fare for its target audience, women ages 18 to 34, reports TW.

For his part, Fox Reality Channel COO and general manager David Lyle told TW, "I think a lot of people are trying to figure out if the new economic reality demands a new TV reality."

"I don't think glamour will go away; I don't think aspirational TV will go away,� Lyle said. "But the aspirations will be more down to earth."

Still, he added, "I don't think it's going to be all gray sackcloth and ashes by any means. But you will find that the next seasons will reflect how relatively wealthy people are coping with a less affluent society."