We've all seen sitcoms, laughed with them and probably even sung along to their theme songs. We occasionally find their jingles running through our heads: "Here's the story of a lovely lady," click, "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale," click, "Where everybody knows your name." Their catchphrases pepper our vernacular: "Yadda, yadda, yadda." And their characters' tastes even influence what we drink -- cosmopolitans anyone? Who wouldn't agree that the backbone of American television is the sitcom? But did you ever wonder where sitcoms come from, what makes a sitcom a sitcom and who actually comes up with this stuff?

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In the late 1940s, families began to make the switch
from radio to television.

­In 1979, the New Wave band the Buggles sang "Video Killed the Radio Star." To be really accurate, they should have sung "television co-opted the radio star and made her its own," but it probably wouldn't have been as catchy. At any rate, the sentiment is true -- the sitcom owes its roots and early viability to radio. What we know as a sitcom today started as a 15-minute situational comedy on the radio. The term sitcom is even short for situational comedy and was first coined by Variety.