6. Transmedia Comedy: BBC Three, Genre Distribution and Pls Like

‘Short-form’ is typically used within media culture to describe video content that is shorter than 10 minutes in duration, while content that is between 10 and 20 minutes in duration (such as Pls Like) is labelled mid-form. ‘Shorter-form’ is used here as a term to incorporate both and is relative to longform (Enders Analysis 2016).

Tasked with a similar objective to appeal to 16–34-year-olds and facing the same challenges around attracting this demographic group, the UK’s other public service broadcaster, Channel 4, adopted a similar commissioning and distribution strategy in the 2010s. The corporation has simultaneously published comedy shorts not only on its own video-streaming service, All 4, but also on YouTube. Published under Channel 4’s ‘Comedy Blaps’ banner, such comedy-short series have included video-gamer sitcoms Avatards (2016) and the Muslim punk-band comedy, Lady Parts (2018). Demonstrating the potential for comedy shorts to serve a traditional pilot function, Channel 4 have since developed Avatards and Lady Parts, as well as other Comedy Blaps shorts, into traditional long-form broadcast sitcoms.