Comedies require some level of mutual understanding on the part of the audience. Read In the Basement of the Ivory Tower in the Atlantic Monthly. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college. The professor wrote "My students don’t read much, as a rule, and though I think of them monolithically, they don’t really share a culture." It is impossible to have a broad appeal sitcom when the audience does not share a culture. That is why comedy movies are filled with sex jokes and bathroom humor. Those jokes can be understood my a much larger group than political, cultural, or historical jokes.