Just got this from The Comedy Unit (had an unread script with them for about 6 months now):
Dear Writer,
This is to let you know that owing to the huge backlog of scripts that has built up The Comedy Unit is no longer able to read unsolicited full scripts. Because of heavy production commitments, and despite our best efforts to deal with the amount of material we receive, we currently have a backlog of nearly 500 scripts going back to July 2007.
If you sent a script to us within the last 12 months and have not yet received a response we regret that we will now not be able to look at your script.
It has always been The Comedy Unit’s policy to read unsolicited material from new writers and, and as one of the few companies which still does so, this decision has not been taken lightly. We believe that seeing material from new writers is important and we have discovered a lot of good new comedy writers this way. We will continue reading unsolicited material but at the moment we do not have the time or resources to deal with so many complete scripts.
However if you wish to re-submit your script, or send in some new material, we will be happy to accept it in the form of a short synopsis of the idea and a character breakdown accompanied by no more than two or three representative scenes from the script. We hope this will enable us to make an initial assessment of the idea and will help us get back to you within a reasonable timescale. If we react positively to what we see at this preliminary stage, then of course we will ask you to send in the full script as per usual.
I hope you will understand why we have had to take this decision and that you will continue to submit material to us.
So, I suppose they still do accept submissions after a synopsis and character profiling. Might make no difference (it might actually mean they get through scripts faster) if your sitcom is as tight as a duck's arse, but thought it might be worth mentioning if you're just about to send the script off.
Dan
