The Laugh Track Thread

[D'Snowth]

Some shows have managed to withstand the test of time without a laugh track, but laughter is social, and it's contagious, which is one of the reason why many shows began to use laugh tracks in the first place: it's easier for people to laugh at something when they're with other people, as opposed to by themselves, so in a sense, the purpose of laugh tracks is to recreate the atmosphere of actually being with other people (since before television, people would see movies or plays or things like that in theaters, in the presence of other people, where it was okay to laugh as loud and much as you wanted), and since in a number of cases, live audiences were either cost-prohibiting, or simply not practical (shows like TMS or ALF are such elaborated staged shows, audiences aren't going to want to sit through all the different cuts and camera angles, and set adjustments and such).

 

[mr3urious]

One of the first laughter-free sitcoms was The Bill Cosby Show (not to be confused with the more well-known The Cosby Show) from 1969. Cos fought against the higher-ups at NBC over their inclusion of a laugh track or a live studio audience because he felt that audiences should be able to laugh at their own pace. He got his way in the end, leading to high ratings in the show's 1st season.

 

[D'Snowth]

One of the first laughter-free sitcoms was The Bill Cosby Show (not to be confused with the more well-known The Cosby Show) from 1969. Cos fought against the higher-ups at NBC over their inclusion of a laugh track or a live studio audience because he felt that audiences should be able to laugh at their own pace. He got his way in the end, leading to high ratings in the show's 1st season.

The way I heard it, the show did poorly in the ratings, and was canceled after a second season because of the lack of a laugh track.

 

[charlietheowl]

One of the first laughter-free sitcoms was The Bill Cosby Show (not to be confused with the more well-known The Cosby Show) from 1969. Cos fought against the higher-ups at NBC over their inclusion of a laugh track or a live studio audience because he felt that audiences should be able to laugh at their own pace. He got his way in the end, leading to high ratings in the show's 1st season.

A local station aired reruns of that show awhile back and I caught a few episodes. It was a really interesting show, and it seemed to use background music sort of in place of the laugh track, almost in the same way a movie uses music.

 

[D'Snowth]

Getting back on the subject of M*A*S*H, that's another thing that bothered me too, was how they completely did away with any kind of music scoring by Season Eight, and with the show turning into the dark and depressing preach-fest that it was by then, the lack of music and the considerably toned down laugh track only made matters worse. Interestingly, producer Burt Metcalfe's reasonings for removing music cues and buttons echoed original creator Larry Gelbart's about wanting to have no laugh track in the first place: "Just like the actual Korean War."

The first season was very heavy in its use of quirky scoring (the episode "To Market, To Market" where Hawkeye and Trapper sell Henry's new desk is a great example), after that we still had music cues coming in and out of commercials, plus the occasional interlude for certain scenes (Klinger hang gliding out of camp, Flagg ransacking a tent after releasing a prisoner, Charles being pranked by Hawkeye, B.J., and Margaret), then by Season Four they dropped scoring and just kept those cues for commercials, which they used less and less of each season until Eight when they did away with the music altogether.

 

[Drtooth]

I keep hearing how terrible Dads is, but I'm too busy with SHIELD to bother with it. But considering the producer behind it was the same guy who actually wrote about how Dharma and Greg overused it, that doesn't go down too well.

 

[Dominicboo1]

Oh believe me, there was little to no logic in Hooterville, they not only broke the laws of logic, they DESTROYED them: acknowledging the written and directed by credits, acknowledging and correcting subtitles, humming and singing along with the theme song or other music cues... and who WAS playing the fife and drum during Oliver's speeches?

Exactly! I still love that show though....did Dinosaurs have a laugh track? I don't mind it say on The Muppet Show, because I can pretend it's just the audience watching the show.....

 

[mr3urious]

did Dinosaurs have a laugh track? I don't mind it say on The Muppet Show, because I can pretend it's just the audience watching the show.....

No it didn't.

 

[D'Snowth]

The laugh track worked on TMS mainly because it didn't use the laugh track that was in place for all American sitcoms, which by that time, had become so familiar, that it actually started to sound fake; being over in the U.K., not only was it easy for Jim to bypass the regular laugh track, but he also pretty much recorded his own custom laugh track for TMS, which apparently had sounded so realistic and convincing, that many people really believed the show was taped in front of a live audience, and wanted to attend tapings. Plus, with TMS being the corniest of vaudeville, the illusion of it being a live show worked.

The 30 years celebration, on the other hand, that DEFINITELY has a laugh track.

 

[D'Snowth]

I learned something new about Charley Douglass, the aforementioned Laff Box inventor: he literally created the applause for ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN. You know how during the closing of the show, you hear what sounds like one lone person sarcastically clapping (well, I've never really seen much of Laugh-In, so I wouldn't really know)? That apparently was Douglass himself, he had recorded himself clapping in the control room, then used it during the closing of an episode, and because the producers thought it was hilarious and felt it fit thr show well, they kept it.