ABC to take advantage of federal government requirement that Jim Belushi must always be on television

ABC will once again claim the lucrative Belushi Tax Credit, the annual deduction granted to any television network that airs a show featuring the federally protected Belushi species, which has been listed as endangered since 1982. Throughout much of the ‘00s, ABC cashed in on the Belushi Tax Credit with eight seasons of According To Jim, eventually even saving enough to buy itself a gently used Ski-Doo. After the show ended in 2010, ABC endured a brief, belt-tightening year while CBS took advantage by casting Jim Belushi in The Defenders; however, CBS was wealthy enough that it didn’t really need the extra income, so they could afford to cancel the show after a single season.

That left ABC free to snap up Belushi this year for a new half-hour sitcom to be written by Murphy Brown creator Diane English, thus giving it the double-whammy of the Belushi Tax Credit as well as the 1990s Sitcom Refugee Credit—currently helping to find a home for displaced ’90s TV stars like Tim Allen, Kirstie Alley, and even Roseanne Barr—which should help ABC endure these very financially uncertain times. Beyond knowing that Belushi will play the single father of a teen, there’s no word yet on what else the sitcom will entail. But it is assumed that the show will meet with the tax credit’s clearly stated requirements that Belushi must play just a regular guy who prefers things such as hamburgers and blues music to frou-frou, newfangled stuff, and that he be surrounded at least 40 percent of the time with people who do enjoy that frou-frou, newfangled stuff, as mandated by federal law.