Is the traditional sitcom style becoming less popular?

Every show you listed is a sit-com. Some are single camera and some are multi camera.

Multi camera fell out of style because it limits the creativity. Some shows still use it because its cheaper and they aren't concerned with being creative.

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Multi camera fell out of style because it limits the creativity. Some shows still use it because its cheaper and they aren't concerned with being creative.

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yes that what i meant. like the kind o shows with laugh tracks. i when i said sitcom i assumed there was a difference between , at least in the case of the office parks and rec, and modern family, the documentary style filming, and in the case of its always sunny and the league they dont have the traditional sitcom facets you mentioned. i apologize for my lack of knowledge

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(although I'm sure they supplement with some canned laughter as well).

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To the OP, it was becoming less popular, but it has seen a resurgence, and I'm not a fan. The multi-camera, live audience forces the writing to lean heavily on zippy one liners and slapstick, and the quality of the jokes goes way down.

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I know the Big Bang theory has a live audience (although I'm sure they supplement with some canned laughter as well).

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ya think?




And "live studio audience" is just as bad as laugh tracks

The problem is that those one-liner sitcomes like Cosby, Home Improvement, Roseanne, etc are now hackneyed.

How much more can you do? The family angles have been played out. Sophisticated family in New York? Cosby. Upper middle class family with macho/manly man lead? Home Improvement. Lower class family? Roseanne. Bunch of friends living in a big city? Friends.

Then they hammered those kind of shows to the ground with According to Jim, My Wife and Kids, King of Queens, etc.

there will never be another Seinfeld

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Now, there has been a recent uptick in crappy, crappy mutli cam sitcoms, this I grant you.

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This is what I'm referring to. Mainly, the multi cam shows that have persisted after the proliferation of single cam shows recently. Basically, when Must See TV shifted from Friends/Seinfeld to The Office/30 Rock. For better or worse, it's just easier to address the state of the sitcom as whole and what trends were popular in terms of NBC's thursday night. It's not as accurate now, but it's a pretty good indicator.

I'm talking more specifically bout Chuck Lorre and the guys that make Anger Management on FX. Dads as well. There are others. I think The Millers is multi cam, which is weird because Greg Garcia did so well with his last two single cam shows, Earl and Raising Hope. I don't think the people making those shows are very concerned with creativity or even putting out a decent product.

As far as HIMYM goes, it's pretty unique in a lot of ways. It's multi cam, but not filmed in front of an office. There is a laugh track, but it doesn't mess with the timing of the jokes because the people taped for the laugh track don't see anything until the final product. And many of the jokes rely on what happens in the editing bay with cutaways, etc, which is definitely more single cam oriented. So, yeah, technically a multi-cam, it's obvious that they set out to be different from the beginning. And not just from the premise of the show, they did a lot of things differently.

I think it's going to be tough for multi-cam to come back into style because people have gotten so used to hearing more than 3 jokes in a minute. 30 Rock writers were putting 10 jokes on a page most of the time.