Media thoughts
There Will Never Be a New ‘Seinfeld’Streaming killed the sitcom era, but not our desire for the laughs it delivered.
Mary Julia KochJan. 16, 2026 WSJ
 I was at a dinner recently with friends and someone mentioned a comedy series that no one else at the table had seen. Another praised a new crime show that was apparently everywhere except my Netflix feed. I recommended a historical drama that nobody else had heard of.
A decade or two ago, everyone at the table might have been talking about the same handful of network hits. I always found an audience to enjoy a spontaneous Michael Scott quote from “The Office.”
“I’m not superstitious,” I’d say to my brother. Instinctively, he’d reply: “I’m just a little stitious.”
Those years were the zenith of the cable industry, a period of so-called peak TV. A decade or two earlier, sitcoms captured the masses at a level the season finale of “The White Lotus” can’t hope to match.
“Seinfeld” was so widely enjoyed that its series finale in 1998 was screened in Times Square. “M*A*S*H*” set an audience record that may never be broken when 77% of U.S. households with televisions watched its series finale in 1983.
Today, even the most-watched network entertainment show, CBS’s“Tracker,” captures only 4.5% of all television households. The weekly episode sitcom format has largely lost out to the modern binge-watching habit fueled by prestige dramas and reality TV.
The more saturated the industry, the more fragmented, as streaming services offer an endless array of series and episodes curated to each user’s preferences and engagement patterns. Even shows with huge fan bases are niche on the nationwide scale: Apple TV+ listed “Severance” as its most-watched series ever in early 2025, yet only 11% of U.S. households use Apple TV+.
The confusion at my recent dinner is a natural byproduct of the ever-expanding media landscape of 2025. When we don’t watch the same things, we don’t follow the same storylines. We don’t hold in our minds the same characters or anticipate the same season finales.
Apart from sports—the last bastion of live TV programming—we have fewer mutual points of reference with strangers, coworkers, even friends. In this era of hyperpersonalized entertainment, what replaces shared culture?
And yet: The decline of broadcast networks hasn’t erased our fondness for the shows they produced, particularly sitcoms. There is still a steady demand on streaming services for shows like “Friends” and especially “The Office,” which Nielsen reported dominated Netflix in 2020 despite concluding nearly a decade prior.
The popularity of these classic shows is driven by fans both new and old. Half of Americans rewatch a TV episode at least once a week, according to a 2023 YouGov poll. Most of them choose comedy. They say it’s because of the humor, comfort and relatability of the characters.
Perhaps the entertainment industry ought to tap into this nostalgia. The team behind “The Office” is at least trying, with a spinoff show called “The Paper.” Yet to replicate its brand of cringe comedy today is a near-impossible task.
It may simply be that the best laughter is the kind that you get after hearing a joke from that show you loved years ago.
Ms. Koch is associate editor of Free Expression. |
