Laugh tracks work if the show is designed with a lot of big laughs: Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Cheers, Two-and-a-half Men, Dharma & Greg, The Cosby Show, etc. were all perfectly fine with a laugh track. But you have to pace the show for them: once the line is given, the actors need to pause for the laughs.
Shows without laugh tracks work if the jokes come very quickly. A laugh track on Arrested Development, The Simpsons, Sporst Night, Scrubs, etc. would be distracting mainly because you’d miss the many tiny jokes that get tossed at you in rapid succession.
The big problem with laugh tracks are that mediocre comedies use them as a substitute for good writing (Yes, Dear, According to Jim, Full House, etc.). There are plenty of good sitcoms that use laugh tracks, but bad sitcoms *always * use them. Essentially, all bad sitcoms use laugh tracks, but not all sitcoms with laugh tracks are bad.
A laugh track is the artificial addition of pre-recorded laughter to a show that was not filmed or taped before a live audience (more here). The Hank McCune Show (1950), Mister Ed (1961), Gilligan’s Island (1963), Bewitched (1964), The Brady Bunch (1969), MASH* (1972) (outside the operating theater), the first two seasons of Happy Days (1974), The Love Boat (1976), and Eight Is Enough (1977) had laugh tracks.
I Love Lucy (1951), The Honeymooners (1955), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), All in the Family (1971), Seinfeld (1990), and Friends (1994) did not have laugh tracks — they were made before live audiences.
About Sledge Hammer’s laugh track, I’m going from memory here but it was my favorite show while it was on…
It was originally supposed to be a “Police Squad” style series, and started off with no laugh track. This was a big deal at the time and considered very risky for a main network show. Too risky apparantly, because after a few shows a horrible canned laugh track was added in. I had many rants with my geek friends back in the day about the “selling out” of Sledge Hammer. We eventually boycotted the show and endlessly rewatched our Betamax’s of Max Headroom.
Though “Taped before a live audience” is true, the laughter you hear on those shows is a laugh track. Live laughter is too sparse and erratic. Though there was a change in laugh track style in the 70s (with the “taped before a live audience” shows) to make a more “natural” sound, laugh tracks were still used on nearly all “taped before a live audience” shows.
Laugh tracks have weaned me of the need to laugh when others are laughing. (Not my little brothers, though. They’ll repeat jokes they don’t understand if it was presented as funny on TV.)
Now, instead of laughing, laugh tracks with unfunny shows tend to make me uncomfortable. It’s like watching alien television. I think one of the problems is that the actors are divorced from the laughter. I’ve heard comedians aren’t supposed to laugh on stage, but they do have to pause to let laughter die out, and if it goes on long enough they respond to it.
You said it. I was just going to mention That 70’s Show as well.
That show is really the only one that the laugh tracks bugs me on. It seems so damn forced; it detracts from the (albeit little) humor the show actually does have.
I believe the first thirteen episodes had a laugh track, and the others didn’t.
In a related note, it’s worth pointing out that the introduction to the Sledge Hammer! DVD set has creator Alan Spencer describing it as “Sledge Hammer! has never sounded better – because we got rid of the stupid laugh track.” Made me do a big the first time I saw it…
I really don’t remember the laugh track when it originally aired. Alan Spencer mentions on the DVD that the track was taken out and that he thought it was much better. The DVD also had showed some scenes with the laugh track, and it just felt way out of place.
Shows that are filmed before an actual audience, like Married with Children and Red Dwarf, are much more tolerable than shows with laugh tracks, mainly vecause the actors acknowledge and interact with the laughter. For example, when Al Bundy would be giving one of his great speeches, he would pause and nod, and generally pace his lines according to the laughter. It sets up an interplay between actors and audience, and gives it much more of the feel of watching live comedy rather than piped-in laughter over actors going through their motions. Those producer-types who force shows to use canned laughter should be locked in a small metal room for the rest of their life with the laugh tracks perpetually playing.
Recently there was a new sitcom that debuted. I couldn’t tell you much about it I had it on but I wasn’t paying attention (probably reading and posting on the SDMB, that damned time waster). One thing I did remember about it is that it was all laugh track. That’s all I heard for the entire time it was on was the annoying laugh track. After that I knew it wasn’t worth watching again.
I agree with this. Seeing a funny movie in a packed theater can be a lot more enjoyable than seeing it at home alone. But in general, the laughter on sitcoms doesn’t do this for me. Maybe because there’s no real sharing of the experience.
What about talk shows: Leno, Letterman, Conan, and the like? The laughter on those doesn’t bother me at all. In the monologue and desk bits, the host is actually talking to the audience, so it doesn’t seem out of place. And with the guest interviews, obviously they’re talking for the benefit of the audience. Maybe I don’t like it on sitcoms because in the reality of the show, there is no audience, so having one ruins my suspension of disbelief.
No, I meant, if you were outside the U.S. and you watched MASH, chances are you never heard a laugh track at all. Ever. There’s a few other threads on this board that talk about the differences between TV shows released in the U.S. and elsewhere that brings this up. I htink someone made a more detailed post about it being different in the UK or soemthing.
I grew up watching MASH with no laugh track. The show never had one at all.
When we got cable with American stations, we heard the laugh track for the first time.
Getting to be even more annoying is the “Kiss Track” - whenever two people kiss on a sitcom, there is the inevitable “Wooooo” from the soundtrack. It’s like the “audience” has never seen two people kiss before and has to make special note of it when it happens.
Has anyone noticed that even the laugh/woohoo/awww tracks are getting more crass? Two people kissing used to get the “Oh, well, isn’t that just lovely?” kind of polite applause of approval back in the 70s and now it’s “whistle Woohoo! bark! bark! bark”.
Geez, if the studio audience was like that in real life, I’d walk off the set in disgust if I was one of the actors.
Speaking of Scrubs , is it me or does the pacing / comedic style of the show remind you of the old show Parker Lewis Can’t Lose ?
It has that same fast pace, quirky sound effects, spliced in daydream sequences.
I’d swear it was made by the same producers.
I specifically remember seeing a “Making of…” documentary on Friends and it showed you a sound editor picking out a laugh wav file from a large list of them, and dubbing it into a particular point of the videoed episode. He explained they do this when the studio laugh isn’t big enough, or short enough, or too big, or in the wrong place.
So it most definitely has a laugh track. Maybe a bit more sophisticated than older TV, but canned laughter all the same.
the first time I saw it…