I ran into an old episode of Hogan’s Heroes the other day that stuck me as odd. It didn’t have a laugh track. Ironically, the show was one where two pilots were shown, one with and one without a laugh track. The resulting data ensured future shows would have fake laughter. This wasn’t the pilot, though, so I think it was just an error on the part of the streaming service.
However, it was very odd. Many of the jokes didn’t come off as funny without the laugh track. Many of them came off as cruel. That got me to thinking about how they had to put laughter in these shows to begin with. I had my suspicions, but was I way off!
Well, to be honest, my suspicions were well-founded if you go back far enough. Bing Crosby was tired of running two live broadcasts, one for each coast, so he invested in tape recording, using German recorders Jack Mullin had brought back after World War II. Apparently, one week, Crosby’s guest was a comic named Bob Burns. He told some off-color stories, and the audience was howling. Of course, none of that would make it on the air in those days. But they saved the recording.
A few weeks later, either a bit of the show wasn’t as funny or the audience was in a bad mood. So they spliced in some of the laughs from the Burns performance. You could guess that would happen, and that’s the apparent birth of the laugh track. But that method didn’t last long before someone — Charley Douglass — came up with something better.
Sweetening
The problem with a studio audience is that they might not laugh at the right times. Or at all. Or they might laugh too much, too loudly, or too long. Charley Douglass developed techniques for sweetening an audio track — adding laughter, or desweetening by muting or cutting live laughter. At first, this was laborious, but Douglass had a plan.
He built a prototype machine that was a 28-inch wooden wheel with tape glued to its perimeter. The tape had laughter recordings and a mechanical detent system to control how much it played back.
Douglass decided to leave CBS, but the prototype belonged to them. However, the machine didn’t last very long without his attention. In 1953, he built his own derivative version and populated it with laughter from the Red Skelton Show, where Red did pantomime, and, thus, there was no audio but the laughter and applause.
Do You Really Need It?
There is a lot of debate regarding fake laughter. On the one hand, it does seem to help. On the other hand, shouldn’t people just — you know — laugh when something’s funny?
There was concern, for example, that the Munsters would be scary without a laugh track. Like I mentioned earlier, some of the gags on Hogan’s Heroes are fine with laughter, but seem mean-spirited without.
Consider the Big Bang theory. If you watch a clip (below) with no laugh track, you’ll notice two things. First, it does seem a bit mean (as a commenter said: “…like a bunch of people who really hate each other…” The other thing you’ll notice is that they pause for the laugh track insertion, which, when there is no laughter, comes off as really weird.
Laugh Monopoly
Laugh tracks became very common with most single-camera shows. These were hard to do in front of an audience because they weren’t filmed in sequence. Even so, some directors didn’t approve of “mechanical tricks” and refused to use fake laughter.
Even multiple-camera shows would sometimes want to augment a weak audience reaction or even just replace laughter to make editing less noticeable. Soon, producers realized that they could do away with the audience and just use canned laughter. Douglass was essentially the only game in town, at least in the United States.
The Douglass device was used on all the shows from the 1950s through the 1970s. Andy Griffith? Yep. Betwitched? Sure. The Brady Bunch? Of course. Even the Munster had Douglass or one of his family members creating their laugh tracks.
One reason he stayed a monopoly is that he was extremely secretive about how he did his work. In 1960, he formed Northridge Electronics out of a garage. When called upon, he’d wheel his invention into a studio’s editing room and add laughs for them. No one was allowed to watch.
You can see the original “laff box” in the videos below.
The device was securely locked, but inside, we now know that the machine had 32 tape loops, each with ten laugh tracks. Typewriter-like keys allowed you to select various laughs and control their duration and intensity,
In the background, there was always a titter track of people mildly laughing that could be made more or less prominent. There were also some other sound effects like clapping or people moving in seats.
Building a laugh track involved mixing samples from different tracks and modulating their amplitude. You can imagine it was like playing a musical instrument that emits laughter.
Before you tell us, yes, there seems to be some kind of modern interface board on the top in the second video. No, we don’t know what it is for, but we’re sure it isn’t part of the original machine.
The original laff box wound up appearing on Antiques Roadshow where someone had bought it at a storage locker auction.
End of an Era
Of course, all things end. As technology got better and tastes changed, some companies — notably animation companies — made their own laugh tracks. One of Douglass’ protégés started a company, Sound One, that used better technology to create laughter, including stereo recordings and cassette tapes.
Today, laugh tracks are not everywhere, but you can still find them and, of course, they are prevalent in reruns. The next time you hear one, you’ll know the history behind that giggle.
If you want to build a more modern version of the laff box, [smogdog] has just the video for you, below.
Sitcoms are worthless without forced laughter injected.
Laugh tracks are the corn syrup of television. If the product sucks, just throw more in.
You could have stopped after 3 words.
Yes, SitComs without laugh tracks seem flat, but worse, IMHO, is when they over-do it. When my kids were young and watched Disney channel, actors on shows would walk into a room and say something simple like “hello stupid”, which generated uproarious laughter. Every line was over-the-top hysterical, at least to the artificial audience.
I loved the Big Bang Theory and Seinfeld, but in later seasons, as the jokes got weaker, the canned laughter got stronger. Worse, once you notice laughter as being out of proportion, you can’t pretend it’s not there and the shows become unwatchable.
The core “problem” with such SitComs is, I think, that they’re aimed at an US audience and don’t take foreign audiences into account (obviously).
This is no complaint, just an realization. A lot gets lost in translation, also for cultural reasons.
In principle, such shows are thus better not sold internationally, thus.
Because us foreigners living in Europe and other places do have a different culture and “don’t get it” most of time.
So to us, these laugh tracks are some sort of indicator that there’s a funny moment right now.
Which as such is a positive thing, maybe, so we can learn about US culture a bit.
But that being said, the SitComs aren’t exactly an authentic representation, but a distorted picture of the real thing. Obviously.
The bad thing is , perhaps, that these SitComs do shape the image of the “dumb American”.
In an ideal world, such shows would have a warning/information dialogue in the beginning
that tells us foreign people that the following programme is a satire and doesn’t represent real US society.
“In an ideal world, such shows would have a warning/information dialogue in the beginning
that tells us foreign people that the following program is a satire and doesn’t represent real US society.”
And that’s the real problem, those silly signs and warnings:
“don’t touch the fire place, it can be hot”
“slippery when wet”
“objects in mirror are closer than they appear”
Assuming that everything can be fixed with a sign is not my ideal of “an ideal world”. It prevents people from thinking for themselves while providing leverage for silly lawsuits.
“thinking for themselves” is good, but let’s have a look at current political situation. It’s worse than a SitCom.
How are we people from Europe, China, Australia etc supposed to know what’s real and not? And where to draw the line?
We have little idea about the US pop culture, for example.
The music/film charts are different, too.
A lot of music played in Europe on radio is unknown in the US and vice versa.
A message screen that says “Warning: This is a SitCom. All names and characters are fictious and are not related to real, living people.
Similarities with real, living people are not intended.” would not harm, I think, but remind the audience that the show isn’t real.
Because, it’s easy to forget.
An example:
Here in my family, I often had to tell my relatives that it’s just a show and not a documentary.
It sometimes happened that a relative came into the living room, stood there when TV was running, and saying “it’s incredible how dumb the Americans are”.
I had to remind them “See, these are actors. It’s just a show. They’re not really that dense.”
Then I got a look of disbelief “Hmm, okay. Sure.”
– Which means that there’s still some questioning happening.
Exactly because us people don’t know how much truth is in there, actually.
Somehow you do understand it’s “just a show”, but due to lack of a real life comparison it’s hard to judge.
And YouTube videos are also nolonger a thrustful source, sadly.
In the early days of YouTube you had ordinary people with a trashy 320×240 or 640×480 pixel camcorder talking about their life and their hobbies.
You had authentic people, in short.
Nowadays everyone makes a show out if it and “influencer” is a job to some.
This is stuff a retard would type if a retard learned to type. I suspect it was not composed by a biological person, but an algorithm advocating for a Government Department of Holding Your Hand While You Watch TV.
Wild! I wonder how many of us Americans “learn” [wrongly?] about each other (and maybe even our own selves) in the same way!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched shows with tons of laughter that I thought to myself “What’s wrong with me, that everyone else thinks this is hilarious, and I just feel like it’s work…”
A lot of these sitcoms are full of people that you wouldn’t ever hang out with personally. And you need the assurance of other humans that it’s a joke.
I don’t understand how people like the Big Bang Theory and the autistic guy being the brunt of jokes. The people that it makes fun of the most seem to be the ones that it’s actually targeted to.
I’ve heard Big Bang described as a show ABOUT nerds, but not FOR nerds. It was made to appeal to normies, so it is about how absurd the nerds are.
As opposed to shows like IT Crowd or Community, where the nerds were ok and it was often the world around them that was absurd.
Someone nailed it some time ago.
‘The “Big Bang Theory” is what you get when stupid people attempt to write smart characters.’
Pennie is the only somewhat real human.
Howard is when they stopped trying.
They cast an obvious, flamboyant gay actor to play the ‘king nerd’…Because they called the nerds ‘gay’ in HS…Logical.
I think it’s morally wrong to accuse a fictional character of being autistic just because he refused to have sex with you. Did you fail at stalking him?
The show MAS*H was a very different program without the laugh track, which is an option on the DVDs- while some of the episodes were pretty dark in their own right, without the laugh track a lot of the episodes have a tinge of malevolence to it.
I was going to bring up the MAS*H example. In the UK the laugh track was removed, because Brits felt that it was crass to add fake laughs, especially given that it’s set in the Korean war.
Though this is not the correct story. The producers didn’t want the laugh track, but CBS forced it on them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/7xauws/til_that_mash_aired_on_bbc2_in_the_uk_without_a/
Many of the episodes have tinge of suck to them.
All the episodes Alda directed should be erased, burnt and forgotten.
Laugh tracks are interesting…
You were supposed to think that was funny?
WTF?
Was the laugh track added to Python for American release?
It’s there.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus was “filmed in front of a live studio audience”, as they used to say about Cheers. They are occasionally visible, for instance in series II episode 13 when there is a “pitch invasion” and part of the audience is seen running onto the set to remonstrate with the performers about a sketch in appalling taste. If you watch carefully, there’s a lady in the front row wearing a blue dress who is doubled over laughing, but when the cue comes to get onto the set she leaps through the rest of the audience like a gazelle with a lion on its tail and makes it to the counter first to start arguing with Graham Chapman. Evidently this was her one chance in a lifetime to be in a Monty Python sketch and she wasn’t going to lose out!
And like Cheers they did multiple takes and had lights to remind the audience when to laugh, particularly on the 10th try.
the creators really didn’t want a laugh track, as it was more of a studio note, but they made this one compromise and i think it did wonders for the show, that was to never use the laugh track during an or session. it gives the show a cool down period that makes the funnier scenes stand out more, even the or jokes were often pretty funny. the duality of the show allows it to make you bust guts one minute and then rip the heart out of your chest the next. it is the perfect tv show.
Laugh tracks are the norm in the US, but certainly in the UK they’re seen as being crass: as though you’re being told when to laugh rather than being allowed to make up your own mind when a joke is funny.
https://www.eskimo.com/~rkj/weekly/aa022101a.htm
There are many US comedies without laugh tracks now (thankfully). Here’s a list of UK & US comedies without laugh tracks.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls002740489/
I seem to recall that some shows had two sound tracks, and US one with laugh tracks and a UK one without. Also once somebody had to apologize for accidentally airing the US version in the UK for one episode of something, since it caused a lot of angry letters…
Here in Germany, we’re often having the laugh tracks, too and are used to it when it comes to US shows (on free TV).
Well, at least my generation is used to it by now.
Older generations like my grandma were slightly confused about the laugh tracks.
And when I was being asked “who’s always laughing and why?”,
I couldn’t help and had to agree that it’s a bit annoying and confusing after a while. If you do focus on it, consciously.
Because it feels like someone’s telling “you must laugh here, dummy! It’s so funny”.
Also, it kind of harms the atmosphere if a joke or situation was very humorous all by its own and doesn’t need any support.
Or if the situation/dialogue has had some actual depth to it that’s more powerful without the laughs.
Mash comes to mind, which I can’t remember having a laugh track here.
That being said, we also have background laughs in comedy shows or political satire, but it’s a bit more natural maybe.
The audience in the studio does the laughing part, though some might be paid for this, not sure.
But that’s just me, speaking under correction. I’m no expert here.
Personally, I think it’s good if releases on DVD/BD have both kind of tracks.
At very least for the original US English audio track. :)
Laugh tracks are unbearable, which leads to spared time not watching the images that go with these.i
Isn’t Big Bang Theory mostly filmed infront of a live audience, so most of the laugh track is ‘real’?
Both… They were filmed with a live audience, but a laugh track was still used to fill in where the audience did not provide the desired response.
Also:
Laugh lights, clap lights.
So the audience knows that was supposed to be funny.
They don’t do it in one take, even if you assume it was funny once…
So unreal all my life. The only reality TV is a security camera aimed at random, everything else is edited and manipulated.
.
The social nature of laughter explains the mean-to-funny transition. I remember watching “The Royal Tennenbaums” in the theater when it came out amd there’s a subtle gag where Dudley (the autistic member of the family) several scenes after the scene where the sister attempts suicide pushes open a glass door and leaves a bloody hand print, implying that in the intervening half hour of the time line nobody clues Dudley in that he should wash his hands.
You could have heard a pin drop in the theater until the two of us laughed, and effectively gave permission for other to laugh too at what could be read as a sick and cruel gag, but which really just further illustrated that the whole family was somewhat out to lunch (the premise being that they’re all self-involved basket cases).
People often hold back laughter in ambiguous or fraught situations (and fraught situations often get the hardest tension dispelling laughter and so they are a staple of comedy) so given that viewers are mostly atomized and glued to thelr TVs singularly in small groups where the social cost of laughing first at something your roommates/family/whatever don’t find funny is much lower if the “studio audience” laughs first.
There’s also a message in here about how much our emotions are collaboratively generated and how easy it is for someone to manipulate group emotional responses.
I always enjoy a good invention origin story. This one makes me wonder how my sense of humor may have been shaped by the use of the laugh track. As a child raised in front of a black and white glowing box, what I perceive as funny today may have been developed from a comedy show producer inserting a laugh track into scenes where laughter would have been an unnatural reaction. This may explain why I chortle instead of scream in pain when I slip on banana peels.
The Big Bang Theory takes simple elementary school “physics” and dumbs it down so an American audience can understand it. And just in case, they add a laugh track to be sure.
“The Big Bang Theory takes simple elementary school “physics” and dumbs it down so an American audience can understand it.”
Cue laugh track…
You overlook the white board which was vetted by actual physicists to botch about an imaginary world where Maxwell equations and tensors are taught in elementary school like a little botch (didn’t want to use a profanity, actually did want to but didn’t do).
Charles M. Schultz insisted that there be no laugh tracks on his Peanuts movies, in spite of all the pressure put on him. I’m glad he didn’t give in. My wife thinks they’re kind of depressing; but I laugh all the way through them.
Even social media is infected with laugh tracks. Some so called “content creators” have devolved into using a split screen with some laughing woman to make their droll video funny. It is just more digital garbage.
If you listen to Hogan’s heroes laugh tracks long enough you know they’re using a recording because you’ll hear the same laughter loops after awhile, not recorded in front of a live audience
Shows of this era have one particular laugh loop that always catches my attention. Towards the end of the loop there is what I can best describe as a cat meow. Like “ha ha ha h merrrow” or maybe “ha ha ha her-rowr”.
I don’t know where this hoax came from that the big bang theory uses laugh tracks. But just muting the audience doesn’t mean it’s suddenly without a laugh track. If you take an F1 race video and you remove the engine noise it’s not suddenly a bunch of electric cars.
The big bang theory is the only show where we know they DIDN’T use a laugh track.