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British Comedy Guide

Screenshot of the homepage of the British Comedy Guide on 11 May 2009
URL	http://www.comedy.co.uk/
Type of site	Online British comedy TV, radio and film guide.
Registration	Required to post (free)
Owner	Mark Boosey
Launched	August 2003
Current status	Active

The British Comedy Guide or BCG is a British website covering all forms of British comedy, across all media.^[1] At the time of writing, the BCG has published guides to more than 750 individual British comedies - primarily TV and radio situation comedy, sketch shows, comedy dramas, satire, variety and panel games. Other notable features on the BCG include a news section, a message board, star interviews, a series of comment and opinion articles, a searchable merchandise database, and a section offering advice to aspiring comedy writers. The website also runs The Comedy.co.uk Awards.

Reportedly, The British Comedy Guide attracts over 250,000 unique visitors a month, making it Britain's most-visited comedy-related reference website.^[1]

Background

The website was founded in August 2003 as the British Sitcom Guide (BSG), a website devoted to British situation comedy TV programmes. The website was established by Mark Boosey, a freelance web developer, as a hobby. However, in 2008, it was decided to expand the remit of the website to cover all forms of British comedy, and thus the BSG was re-launched as The British Comedy Guide, and has continued to expand since this point.

Other features added since the site's re-launch as The British Comedy Guide in 2008 include the Collings and Herrin podcast series, a section featuring interviews with people working in British comedy industry, a Twitter-based news service, and the "Twitter Directory", which lists the people and organisations related to British comedy who use Twitter.^[2]

Key People

The Comedy.co.uk Awards

In January 2007, the BSG created The British Sitcom Guide Awards, which were later renamed The British Comedy Guide Awards and are now known as The Comedy.co.uk Awards.^[8] The awards are notable for allowing the public to choose the winners via an online poll, and because they use no shortlist - all broadcast programmes are included in the public vote. This differs from the British Comedy Awards which relies on broadcasters to put their programmes forward for nomination, and only uses a small panel of judges to determine the results. Additionally, The Comedy.co.uk Awards also seeks to name not just the winners, but the worst programme in each category too.

In order to be considered for a Comedy.co.uk Award, a programme must be a British comedy which has had at least one new episode broadcast on British TV or radio between 1 January and 31 December of the previous year. The only exception is shows which span across the new year. For example, if a series began in the previous year, and one episode is shown in the year of voting, the series does not count unless another series of the same show was broadcast later that year.^[8]

The visitors taking part in the poll are asked to give three votes in each category: one to their favourite show, one to their second favourite show, and one to their least favourite show. The vote for "top favourite" scores two points for the selected programme, and a vote for a "second favourite" scores one. The comedy programme with the most points is declared the winner in that category. The show which receives the highest number of "worst" votes is declared the worst comedy in that category.

All of the awards are voted for by the website's users except one, the British Comedy Guide Editors' Award, which is an award voted for just by the controllers of the guide, and is given "to the show, person, channel, or indeed anything else comedy related that deserves some recognition."^[9]

The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2006

The first awards were presented in January 2007 and were known at the time as The British Sitcom Guide Awards 2006, but have since been re-named. Below are the awards.^[9]

The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2007

The second awards were presented in January 2008, originally under the title The British Sitcom Guide Awards 2007. Below are the results.^[10]

The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2008

The third awards were presented in January 2009 and were the first to include radio shows. The 2008 awards were known as the British Comedy Guide Awards 2008, but were re-named in 2009 to reflect the website's new URL. Below are the awards.^[11]

The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2009

Voting for the 2009 awards is currently taking place.^[12]

Footnotes

1. ^ This show did collect the most votes, but too few were cast overall in order to provide a definitive "winner".^[11]
2. ^ This show did collect the most votes, but too few were cast overall in order to provide a definitive "winner". Suspicion was also raised that a significant number of the negative votes may have been cast by users who had unsuccessfully submitted material for the series, and were voting against it as an act of revenge rather than as a fair reflection of its quality.^[11]

References

External links

• British Comedy Guide on Twitter.