Perhaps the first multi-camera setup TV show. Lucille Ball was a pioneer in a lot of elements of sitcoms. If some new, I dunno, Panaflex camera came out, she’d get it. I haven’t seen the show in 30+ years so I don’t know how dated it would be. I reckon it would still stand up, though it fell into the formula of lucy-wants-to-perform-at-the-cabana.
The Honeymooners is still good, also multi-camera, even though there are only 39 episodes plus a few bits on the Jackie Gleason show.
“Sweeteners” have been around as long. If the stars or guys in the booth do not think a joke got sufficient laughter the soundtrack can be made sweeter.
I did not know it (laugh track) was still used for real, rather than ironically (I recall a Simpsons with a laugh track that was perhaps eidetic).
Not a great element for the soundtrack. If Hawkeye (MASH) makes a pun at Frank Burns’ expense, or Arthur Carlson (WKRP) declares, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!” it ought not need laugh track accompaniment.
I’d never seen an episode of Big Bang Theory, but friends persuaded me to give it a try and I watched Season One on DVD a few months ago. There were a lot of things to like but I was distracted and put off by the laugh track which was conspicuously fake and ridiculously overused.
Imagine my surprise when I learned it was always live audiences.
In addition to laughter from a laugh track and from a live audience there is a middle ground which is showing the filmed/taped episode to an audience and recording their response to what they are watching. I believe this was the method used by Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
I watched a video about A Charlie Brown Christmas the other day. It bucked the trend - Charles Schultz said no laugh track. NBC pushed back - Schultz got his way.
There was a recent Omnibus podcast episode that covers this topic at length. Very interesting! (Too bad Ken Jennings is no longer hosting the show since he’s too busy with Jeopardy.)
I remember reading an article about “The Cosby Show” in TV Guide back in the ‘80s. Each episode was filmed (or taped) twice before two different live audiences, and then compared to see if the jokes all worked. If one flopped in the first showing, it was rewritten and tried again (or simply omitted) in the second. Conversely, if one in the first version worked better than in the second, the two were switched.
That’s just isolating the “audience” out of the audio track.
While The Big Bang Theory was filmed in front of a live audience, that doesn’t mean their laughter is spontaneous or organic. Those audiences are coached and encouraged to laugh, and the audio track of their laughter can be sweetened in the final edit.
I didn’t watch much of other Chuck Lorre’s shows, yet they were known for using the laugh track/sweetening. Every damm thing someone said was either a straight-man setup for a joke, or a joke itself. And hi-lar-i-ous.
