Why Sitcoms Stopped Using Laugh Tracks - Cheddar Explains

this is a clip from the hit TV series

Parks and Recreation 128 ounce option

most people call it a gallon but they

call it the regular now let's see what

that same clip would be like if we added

a laugh track

128 ounce option most people call it a

gallon but they call it the regular it

seems so wrong but for most of

television history it was so right over

the last half century or so almost every

comedy on television had canned laughter

from I Love Lucy to the Big Bang Theory

for some the laughter is viewed as an

imposition for others a secondary

character you almost forgot was there

until it wasn't anymore in recent years

the laugh track has been used less and

less as sitcoms in general have

decreased in popularity let's break down

where the mysterious laugh box came from

and where it went before television

existed there was the ballet the Opera

magic and comedy shows when you went to

one of these events you were

experiencing the audience reactions in

real time if something was shocking you

could hear and feel the gasps echo

around you and similarly with laughter

but then came the radio the first ever

broadcast medium those communal

reactions disappeared as American

families gathered in their living rooms

to be entertained radio producers wanted

to develop a way to give people the live

experience at home the first-ever laugh

track began with Bing Crosby's radio

show recording pioneer Jack Mullen

recalls the creation two channels of

communication a trade journal in 1981

the hillbilly comic Bob Burns was on the

show one time and through a few of his

then extremely racy and off-color folksy

farm stories into the show we recorded

it live and they all got enormous

but we couldn't use the jokes so

scriptwriter bill Moreau asked us to

save the last a couple of weeks later he

had a show that wasn't very funny and he

insisted that we put in the salvage less

thus the laugh track was bored fast

forward to the era of early television

comedies were filmed with a single

camera in front of a live audience that

meant that each scene would be filmed

multiple times from multiple angles

instead of the multi cams today which

have multiple cameras capturing one take

those separate angles and takes would be

cut together and when that happened the

laughter was inconsistent audiences

would laugh at the wrong time too loudly

for too long and were simply unreliable

in the late 1940s CBS sound engineer

Charlie Douglas noticed those

inconsistencies and couldn't take it

anymore if a joke didn't get a desired

laugh he would insert one with the use

of a laugh track this technique became

known as sweetening Douglass went so far

as to create a physical laugh box

according to Ron Simon curator of

television and radio at the Paley Center

for Media the device was about three

feet tall the shape of a filing cabinet

very heavy and had slots for 32 reels

which could hold ten laughs each it was

officially named the audience response

duplicator but it became known as The

Laugh box at its best

The Laugh box could hold three hundred

and twenty laps press them one at a time

and you get a similar laughs press

multiple keys at once and a symphony of

laughter would play each key represented

a different age sex and style of laughs

with a foot pedal regulating the way

The Laugh box was mysterious though

since Douglas owned the patent and

created all of them nobody outside of

him and his family members had ever seen

the inside of the Machine and when

Douglas wasn't around the machine was

kept tightly pad locked in an interview

with TV Guide in 1966 dick Hobson said

if the laugh box should start acting

strangely

The Laugh boys wheel it into the men's

room locking the door behind them so no

one can Pete I mentioned the name

Charlie Douglas and it's like Cosa

Nostra everybody starts whispering it's

the most taboo topic in TV the first

sitcom to use the laugh box was the

short-lived series the Hank McCune show

in 1950 the idea of recorded laughter

spread throughout Hollywood and by the

1960s almost every single cameras sitcom

was utilizing canned laughter but it was

only Douglas that engineered the

laughing for everyone for almost a

decade for $100 Douglas would wheel the

mysterious box to each studio on a dolly

and sit with the producers in a

screening room and decide what kind of

laughter and when eventually Douglas

hired a second-in-command to keep up

with the 100 hours of television he

needed to sweeten and the rest was

history multicam sitcoms were

popularized in shows like friends

Frasier Seinfeld and more incorporated

canned laughter

the actors and actresses would know to

hold for laughter knowing that each

scene would be sweetened the Discovery

Channel documentary the one that goes

behind the scenes shows how it works

sometimes the audience responds to big

if I went with the actual lab that laugh

is still going through her next line

into his next reaction and that's it's

five six seconds and in TV gland that's

an eternity sometimes we have to put in

a glass sir

that is shorter it felt like comedies

would be like this forever and then the

Big Bang Theory went off the air in 2019

and took with it one of the last

multicam sitcoms with canned laughter

when we look at the television landscape

today almost every single comedy is a

single-camera comedy and not a multicam

sitcom with canned laughter you can

count on two hands how many multicam

sitcoms that use a laugh track are on TV

right now

and not to mention those that went off

the air this year the use of the laugh

track has almost disappeared completely

from the TV lineup so what changed dead

air in television used to be frowned

upon and shows would push for laugh

tracks whenever possible

bill cosby claimed his first sitcom the

bill cosby show that ran from 1961 to

1971 failed because he had insisted on

not using a laugh track not to be

confused with the very successful The

Cosby Show that aired in the 1980s and

did have a laugh track and mash fought

to not have a laugh track at all but

they came to a compromise with the

studio they would use the canned

laughter but just not during the very

serious oh our scenes while we associate

the 80s and the 90s with the laugh track

that was actually the time when single

camera comedies without canned laughter

started to take over a key player in

this transition was HBO their show's

dream on in 1990 and the Larry Sanders

Show in 1992 ran without laughs tracks

and even garnered praise for doing so

the airing of these shows proved that

comedies could exist and exist

successfully without laugh tracks other

studios took notice and began to follow

suit

then came Curb Your Enthusiasm malcolm

in the middle' scrubs

Arrested Development It's Always Sunny

in Philadelphia 30 rock the office and

the list goes on and on

writers and producers were excited by

the change as it allowed them to stray

from the constant stream of punchlines

to explore character based humor another

reason the laugh track fell to the

wayside according to Mike Royce the co

showrunner of Netflix is one day at a

time I think one of the reasons why

people don't like laugh tracks is they

don't like to be told how to react it's

an American thing don't tell me what the

to laugh at the Big Bang Theory was

one of the last big sitcoms that used

canned laughter and even their creator

Chuck Lorre insisted that absolutely no

sweetening took place on any of his

series which also include Two and a Half

Men and Mike and Molly stating I do not

and have never sweetened my shows with

fake laughs I've always thought it was

pretty hateful and a self-defeating

practice for now the laugh track lives

in a very strange state it's used in

very few shows but lives on in the

reruns of ever popular series like

Friends How I Met Your Mother and more

perhaps history might repeat itself

and we'll see a resurgence in multicam

sitcoms and the laugh track

until then we can thank streaming

services like Netflix and Hulu for

keeping Charlie Douglass's legacy in our

living rooms thank you for watching

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