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Danny Cohen today announced a new Â鶹Éç One initiative at his Controller session at The Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

In a bid to up the supply rate of comedy scripts to the channel, Cohen, alongside Cheryl Taylor, Controller Comedy Commissioning, is committing to a new run of transmittable pilots for Â鶹Éç One – with the focus firmly on unearthing new studio-based sitcoms.

Cohen says: "Comedy in all its forms is incredibly important for Â鶹Éç One but we don't get enough great sitcom scripts coming through – so I'm delighted to be announcing this initiative today. By committing to a group of tx pilots, we hope to help unearth a new generation of national comic gems. At Â鶹Éç Three in Drama, this is how we found our way to Being Human, and I want to take a similar kind of experimental risk on Â鶹Éç One."

Cheryl Taylor added: "The Â鶹Éç's commitment to laugh-out-loud comedy is as strong as ever and we hope that this dedicated pilot initiative will galvanise writers to think about more inventive, likeable and enduring characters for our mainstream channel. We are very proud to have shows like Mrs Brown's Boys, In With The Flynns and Outnumbered on Â鶹Éç One, but there is certainly room for more."

Â鶹Éç Comedy is also hosting a Sitcom Showcase in Salford in October (details below) where more comedy pilots will be developed and performed.

Notes to Editors

The deadline for delivery of scripts is 30 November, with the chosen pieces going into production in the first half of 2012. Details of how to enter scripts will be released in due course.

Salford Sitcom Showcase will show six theatrical presentations of exciting new sitcom scripts, aimed at Â鶹Éç One, Â鶹Éç Two and Â鶹Éç Three audiences. There will be three evening performances from 12 to 14 October 2011.

The six scripts come from talent across the UK and offer a variety of comedy voices.

KT