Seinfeld, Friends, I Love Lucy, and Everybody Loves Raymond were all hits in their time and may have marked permanent residence in your hearts and your homes. The simplicity of a sitcom, a group of friends or close family growing together as they encounter life’s many challenges, relevant to the viewer and real world, you can’t help but be dragged in by the lighthearted fun and the touching moments brought to you by America’s favorite casts.

Could the classics be outweighing the newer dramas and talk shows? The average household is tuning in 4.84 hours worth of sitcoms each week this season. During 1993-94 it was 3.78 hours.

During the 1993-94 season there was an average of 171 hours of comedy aired each week. This year, there were 568 hours of comedy on each week, specially, sitcoms only took up 13% of that 568 hours.

Re-runs of these beloved sitcoms take precedence on their channels, booting new television before they even draft up a second season. Sitcom television has been perfected over the years by writers, and perhaps they struggle to find any newer material that would “surprise” their audiences. I’m thankful for the fact that people still tune in to moral television, but it’s still a red flag that we have to rely on only twelve seasons of our favorite few sitcoms for the next twenty years. You can change the setting, the characters, and their names, but the typical outline of a sitcom remains, with no new moral teachings or predicaments.

These older shows will remain plausible for the next decade, while other shows may be a flash in the pan. Will we ever see a more successful sitcom, again? Or are we doomed to a lifetime of reruns from the 90’s and earlier? Until we start driving hover-cars or playing baseball on Mars, the issues and American challenges presented in older sitcoms will remain relevant for a lifetime.