Sketch Comedy programs differ from sitcoms in that they do not generally feature recurring characters (though some characters and scenarios may be repeated) and often draw upon current events and emphasize satire over character development. Sketch comedy was pioneered by Sid Caesar, whose Your Show of Shows debuted in 1950 and established many conventions of the genre. American sketch comedy reached a later peak in the mid-1970s with the debut of Saturday Night Live, originally a variety program but soon devoted mostly to sketches. In the UK, two of the more successful examples are Not the Nine O'Clock News and Little Britain.

Stand-up comedy has been fairly well represented on television. Stand-up comedians have long been a staple of variety and late-night talk shows; indeed, talk-variety shows such as The Tonight Show traditionally open with a comedy monologue performed by the program host. Television stand-up reached a peak of popularity on British schedules with the immensely popular ITV programme The Comedians.

     
 
Their style of comedy was swept away almost entirely in the Britain of the early 1980s when a new generation of stand-ups challenged what they saw as racist and sexist humour and revolutionised the form under the banner alternative comedy. In the US, stand-up comedy programs became popular on many cable television channels beginning in the mid-1980s, as such "brick wall" shows (nicknamed for the stereotypical use of a fake brick wall as a backdrop) were cheap to produce and air. Stand-up humour later had mixed fortunes on the small screen, often shunted away to the small hours or as part of a larger entertainment extravaganza.

Improvisational comedy has recently been popular with television audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably with both British and American versions of the program Whose Line is it Anyway?.

Animated cartoons have long been a source of comedy on television. Early children's programming often recycled theatrical cartoons; later, low-budget animation produced especially for television dominated Saturday-morning network programming in the US. A few prime-time animated comedies, notably The Flintstones and The Simpsons, successfully mixed attributes of traditional cartoons and sitcoms.

In addition to broad comedy program types, comedy often appears on television in much more subtle forms. Comedy is often a necessary part of other programming, particularly drama. Attempts at mixing comedy and drama in various combinations (sometimes known as dramedy) have been attempted over time.
 
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