As TV executives scour the Edinburgh festival for the next generation of comic talent, they could be forgiven a desperate look in their eye - this year has seen a dearth of big-rating new comedy shows. Suddenly, TV comedy is no laughing matter.
Take BBC2. Formerly the home of I'm Alan Partridge and The Office, Roly Keating's channel has tried out more comedies over the last 12 months. But where are the hits?
Steve Coogan returned with Saxondale, the sitcom adventures of a roadie turned pest controller, but ended up with little more than 1 million viewers.
Coogan's long-time collaborator, Armando Iannucci, also disappointed with his heavily-trailed satire Time Trumpet. It opened with 1.3m viewers but shed 400,000 for its second outing, down to 900,000.
Kath and Kim is the great sitcom hope from down under, so much so that the BBC even bought the movie. But the first episode of the second series was watched by just 1.5 million viewers. And the second? 1.2 million.
Keating also recommissioned second runs of Hyperdrive, the sci-fi spoof starring Nick Frost, and bizarre Rob Brydon vehicle Supernova, despite neither show pulling up any trees first time round.
But the trees remained firmly in place for Supernova's second run, dipping to 900,000 viewers earlier this month. He'll be hoping Hyperdrive manages rather better.
You can't fault Keating for trying. But you can blame him for lame police comedy Feel The Force, starring Green Wing's Michelle Gomez. Don't remember it? Neither do we.
Over on BBC1, Peter Fincham's Friday night line-up is showing all the signs of success exhibited by his predecessor Lorraine Heggessey in the same slot. Very little.
My Hero, surely the least critically acclaimed sitcom ever to make it into its sixth year, sank to 2.4 million viewers last week, with James Dreyfuss stepping into the shoes of Ardal O'Hanlon, while The Kumars at No 42, an ageing transfer from BBC2, had just 100,000 more.
Sure, they were up against Big Brother, but previous weeks weren't much better. No wonder Fincham was so glad to sign up Little Britain stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams on a three-year exclusive deal.
Channel 4 controller Kevin Lygo has long bemoaned the absence of a hit to match the likes of either Friends or Frasier from the US. He tried it with My Name Is Earl, which he recommissioned after hardly spectacular ratings of around 2 million viewers.
Homegrown fare like Graham Linehan's The IT Crowd also failed to match the pedigree of its producer - Ash Atalla (The Office) or its writer Graham Linehan (Father Ted). It was a sign of the lowered expectations for TV comedy ratings, or perhaps the channel's high hopes for its future, that the IT Crowd was recommissioned despite ratings dropping below 2 million.
There's still no sign of the next great US sitcom hope, after Lygo revealed yesterday that the channel's Friday night line-up would be without a single American show this autumn. When did that last happen?
My Name Is Earl gained plenty of critical acclaim, but when did that last guarantee an audience? Just ask Channel Five, where Everybody Hates Chris launched with 2 million viewers, but rapidly saw its audience cut in half.
Meanwhile over at ITV, comedy, like its chief executive's post, remains a position waiting to be filled.
So what are we saying? That it's been a dire 12 months for TV comedy? Or that the audience for programmes that are supposed to make us laugh is fragmenting even quicker than for TV in general?
The danger is that if audiences continue to decline then comedy - already a risky business - will be seen by broadcasters as simply not worth the gamble. Performers like Ricky Gervais, who have already taken their radio show to the web, will take their TV shows there as well.
Could YouTube become the new equivalent of the old BBC2/Channel 4 Friday night comedy zone?
