Laugh Track: Difference between revisions

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The general opinion of the audience held by television executives then (and some would argue now) was [[Viewers are Morons|very low]]. There was serious concern that without a [[Studio Audience]] to "prompt" the home viewer's responses, a comedy would fall flat. The solution was the creation of the [[Laugh Track]] (also known as [[Canned Laughter]]) -- an artificial audience that did nothing but react uproariously to anything and everything.

Naturally, within a few years of its introduction, it was abused and overused. ''Every'' punchline, no matter how lame or subtle, would receive the same tsunami of belly laughs from the virtual audience. It became epidemic, even intruding bizarrely into cartoons (''[[The Flintstones]]'' and ''[[The Jetsons]]'', anyone?). By the 1960s, it had become an annoying intrusion, hated but (in the minds of most producers) mandatory. In the 1970s, however, most sitcoms began to switch from the single-camera, movie-style format to the multi-camera format with a [[Studio Audience]] providing real laughter, which producers found more pleasing because it helped them write better jokes. By the 1980s, the only hit that used a laugh track was ''[[M*A*S*H]]'', which mostly dispensed with its laugh track toward the end of its run, loosening the laugh track's hold on single-camera television comedies. It's still around, but it's not nearly as prominent or overused as it used to be.

Naturally, within a few years of its introduction, it was abused and overused. ''Every'' punchline, no matter how lame or subtle, would receive the same tsunami of belly laughs from the virtual audience. It became epidemic, even intruding bizarrely into cartoons (''[[The Flintstones]]'' and ''[[The Jetsons]]'', anyone?). By the 1960s, it had become an annoying intrusion, hated but (in the minds of most producers) mandatory. In the 1970s, however, most sitcoms began to switch from the single-camera, movie-style format to the multi-camera format with a [[Studio Audience]] providing real laughter, which producers found more pleasing because it helped them write better jokes. By the 1980s, the only hit that used a laugh track was ''[[M*A*S*H (television)]]'', which mostly dispensed with its laugh track toward the end of its run, loosening the laugh track's hold on single-camera television comedies. It's still around, but it's not nearly as prominent or overused as it used to be.

Although it may not seem so, laugh tracks were surprisingly sophisticated systems at the height of their use. Rather than being just simple recordings of a laughing audience, they were actually carefully generated and mixed, with such discrete components as "the guy who gets the joke early" and "housewife giggles" and "the one who didn't get the joke but is laughing anyway" all precisely blended and reblended to create the illusion of a real audience responding to the show.

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"Yeah, well, that's why this machine is dynamite." }}

* In the 1970s, the British pop music show ''Top of the Pops'' used a bizarrely fake-sounding applause track after each performance.

* ''[[M*A*S*H]]'' had one at the network's insistence, but the producers successfully averted it in the OR scenes, and were able to dispense with it entirely for certain later episodes. (The DVD releases of the show provide an option for the viewer to disable the laugh track on the episodes that have it; [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]] on whether or not doing so improves the show.)

* ''[[M*A*S*H (television)]]'' had one at the network's insistence, but the producers successfully averted it in the OR scenes, and were able to dispense with it entirely for certain later episodes. (The DVD releases of the show provide an option for the viewer to disable the laugh track on the episodes that have it; [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]] on whether or not doing so improves the show.)

* Two Garry Marshall-produced sitcoms (''[[The Odd Couple]]'' and ''[[Happy Days]]'') had laugh tracks in their inaugural seasons, before shifting to a live [[Studio Audience]].

* The live-action segments of the ''[[Super Mario Brothers Super Show]]'', which leads to a humourous [[Mondegreen]] when the laugh track obscures something Mario [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogtjjQ6070U says].