Sketch Comedy

"An excellent study of a long-neglected area in television/media studies and is part of a larger turn toward the centrality of comedy in post-war U.S. culture." Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University"— review
"A stalwart of television since its earliest days, sketch comedy finally gets the in-depth critical attention it deserves. Nick Marx shows how sketch comedy has fit (and been constrained by) TV's industrial contexts, from live variety shows in its earliest days to movement across media in the era of multiple platforms. These case studies not only chart sketch comedy's past, they provide the theoretical and analytical tools to consider its future."—Ethan Thompson, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, blurb

"An excellent study of a long-neglected area in television/media studies and is part of a larger turn toward the centrality of comedy in post-war U.S. culture." Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University"— review
"A stalwart of television since its earliest days, sketch comedy finally gets the in-depth critical attention it deserves. Nick Marx shows how sketch comedy has fit (and been constrained by) TV's industrial contexts, from live variety shows in its earliest days to movement across media in the era of multiple platforms. These case studies not only chart sketch comedy's past, they provide the theoretical and analytical tools to consider its future."—Ethan Thompson, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, blurb

Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Media and Visual Culture in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. He is editor (with Matt Sienkiewicz and Ron Becker) of Saturday Night Live and American TV and (with Matt Sienkiewicz) The Comedy Studies Reader .