Laughs Of A Lifetime - An Overview

Hello and welcome to my new blog - Laughs Of A Lifetime, a look at the history of sitcoms in the UK over the last 60 years!

I intend to use various data sources available to me to identify the most watched sitcom episode of every year from the arrival of commercial television in the UK in 1955 to the present time. Some are well-remembered and much loved even today, whilst others are better forgotten, and others still are genuinely obscure. Sadly thanks to wiping policies in the past, at least one sitcom episode no longer survives in the archive of the company who made it.

For each years blog I intend to detail the most watched sitcom episode of that year, together with its viewing figure and channel of broadcast. Where possible I will also link to an online video of the episode in question, though please be aware that these videos will have been uploaded by members of the public who are not the original copyright holders, and as such some/most of these linked videos will become dead links at some stage. If I have enough data for a given year I will also summarise some of the other sitcoms that were also-rans in that year, complete with viewing figures, where possible. Speaking of which lets discuss those in more detail (those who don't want to be bogged down in technical details can skip the next paragraph if they wish).

Viewing figures have been compiled in a variety of ways over the years so I will give you a quick overview now. When commercial television first arrive in the UK, in the shape of Asscoiated Rediffusion and ATV providing the London service on weekdays and weekends respectively, viewing was measured in terms of what percentage of viewers in that region tuned in. The figures I have for 1955 and 1956 are of this form and pertain, as far as I can ascertain, to the London region alone, even after the arrival of the North region (Granada/ABC) and Midlands region (ATV/ABC). By 1957 viewing figures began to be compiled as the number of sets or households tuned into the networked programme across the country as a whole, and as the dozen or so other mostly smaller regions came into the network the figures rose year on year well into the 60s. At this stage the BBC and ITV used different viewing compilers with different compilation methods, and I believe (though can't be totally certain) that all viewing figures I have for this era are from ITV's compiler, even for BBC programming. In 1977 the system was changed to being a measure of the number of actual viewers tuned in, rather than households, and an approximate mutliplier of 2.2 viewers per household is usually quoted to translate older figures for comparison with newer ones. Since the change happened midway through 1977 some of the figures for that year have been thus translated, though some appear to have used a multiplier of 2 rather than 2.2 and some appear to have been lower figures under the new system that have then been mistakenly and unnecessarily translated into much higher figures. I will endeavour to find and verify the correct figures, but am limited by the data available to me. During 1981 the industry moved to a new viewing figure compiler, BARB, who, for the first time, were the chosen compilers of both the Beeb and ITV, under a new agreement that continues to the present day, albeit with the subsequent inclusion of literally hundreds of new channels over the years. From 1981 onwards it becomes much more easy for me to verify viewing figures, thanks to BARB's website, and from mid 1998 onwards almost all viewing figures for all terrestrial channels can be easily checked on the Barb website, so those years will be much more certain and accurate.

Phew, that paragraph was longer than even I expected... sorry to those of you who ploughed through it, and welcome back to those who took up the skip option. I intend to post daily from now until Xmas, although the first few posts will be irregular due to a lack of data for the late 50s. I hope you enjoy remembering those sitcoms you enjoyed laughing at and hope that there aren't too many you wish I hadn't reminded you of.