I've come to bury Squiggy, not to praise him

Bill Diamond asks in his post "Is the network sitcom dead?" To that query, let me answer - no, but if this were Oregon, we would be hooking it up to one of those Dr. Kevorkian contraptions and fighting off the right-to-lifers.

Network comedy, because it is run by people who believe the only way they can achieve their mandate of appealing to the broadest audience is to offend the least number of people, tastes like Wheatina. Think about that. Their goal is to not offend. If comedy is gelded (and it's safe to say the networks currently have its balls in a jar), it becomes light entertainment. Shows like "The Amazing Race" fit the light entertainment bill very well so, network thinking seems to go these days, why bother with comedy and the expensive writers and producers who go with it?

This past season I helped a friend with a sitcom pilot. I cringed (the preferred posture of anyone doing one) as I watched the comedy mavens from the network give him their notes. My friend had run a big hit for the same network a few seasons back and knew his way around a scene, but they nonetheless came at him like a swarm of African killer bees, suggesting a raft of "improvements" whose only apparent goal was to eradicate whatever made the show unique. You want to know why sitcoms don't work? It's because by the time they get to the air, they've been stepped on more times than a pound of coke en route from Bogota to Brooklyn.