The next time you bemoan the state of TV today...

[Kegg]

I really have never cared if a sitcom has a live studio audience and/or laugh track, if it's a one camera show or a multi-camera show. All that really matters is if I find the series funny.

Cheers is one of my favourite sitcoms of all time, and it had a live studio audience. The Simpsons did not, and I loved that series as well.

It's been a while since I've seen a really good sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience, though, but that's probably just a matter of taste.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

A studio audience doesn't count. The laughter is REAL in that case. I would prefer that they weren't used either, but at least it's genuine laughs.

Laugh tracks, on the other hand, are completely fake. Machine generated. Unreal to a fault. Their purpose is to create laughs when none exist.

In the end, though, I question the need for any of this. Why should we, the viewers, be told when to laugh? Or why does the show magically become funnier if other people are heard laughing with it? This means the show isn't funny enough as it is.

I mean, Corner Gas manages just fine - without any kind of added laughter at all. I know it's funny, I don't need to be convinced.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Any sort of laugh track, live or not, is distracting. It breaks the fourth wall. I can't tolerate it.

Then again, breaking the fourth wall isn't necessarily a bad thing where comedy is concerned. The Marx Bros., Hope and Crosby, Monty Python . . . they all did it.

They did it in a clever way. A laugh track is not clever and neither is live laughter.

In the end, though, I question the need for any of this. Why should we, the viewers, be told when to laugh? Or why does the show magically become funnier if other people are heard laughing with it? This means the show isn't funny enough as it is.

I wouldn't mind if the effect is neutral, but the effect is actively annoying. I don't watch many comedies - Curb Your Enthusiasm, Archer - and none of them have laugh tracks.

 

[ALF]

I never bemoan the state of TV.
I think there's too much good stuff on TV... people keep telling me I need to watch this, that and the other show, but I've got my hands full with what I watch now.
(PS. no shitcoms or reality BS, please)

 

[Kegg]

A studio audience doesn't count. The laughter is REAL in that case. I would prefer that they weren't used either, but at least it's genuine laughs.

...mostly.

They have admitted to 'sweetening' the laugh track on Cheers, for example - but only with actual laughs recorded from the show. Sometimes they did this becuase a given scene was shot a few times and obviously the audience won't find it as funny the fourth time as they did the first, but there's a bit of laugh doctoring going on in basically any TV show with laughs in it. Here's a quite interesting blog post on the subject by sitcom writer Ken Levine:
http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2007/06/laugh-tracks.html

Is it inane? Arguably. I don't really see the need for televised sitcoms to emulate a live show, which is clearly the idea behind the audience. I simply don't mind the practice.

 

[marksound]

Some of us who were present during the Flying Nun days find ourselves, on a daily basis, either shaking our heads in disbelief or outright laughing our asses off at what the young people today call entertainment.

Werd t'ya mutha.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I know they don't sweeten the laughter on Red Green, which is the only show I watch that has laughs. But again, that's a studio audience, PLUS in that show's case, the audience is literally part of the show. So it gets a free pass.

 

[Kegg]

I know they don't sweeten the laughter on Red Green,

Have they actually said that? I mean Levine says they even sweeten live broadcasts, and does give the proviso the sweetening in the case of Cheers or Frasier is sometimes just using a laugh from an earlier take.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Red Green is Canadian, you know.

Levine may have to use such fakery on HIS shows, but that means nothing here. Completely different production company and all that.

 

[MacLeod]

I don't think it's fair to judge a 60's programme by comparing it against a 2011 programme. When ever we watch a programme we base it on what else is around at the time. And as we get older we start to get nogalstic for the good old days for lack of a better term

 

[Kegg]

^ Red Green is Canadian, you know.

And they sweetened (or invented whole cloth) laugh tracks on British comedies too, y'know.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Anyone watch Breaking Bad?

Spoiler: Breaking Bad Season 3

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtZpo89mmJo[/yt]

A laugh track can really make a difference.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Any sort of laugh track, live or not, is distracting. It breaks the fourth wall. I can't tolerate it.

I had kind of an opposite experience recently when watching a DVD of a Beverly Hillbillies episode. For some reason, there was a 5-10 minute portion on this particular episode where the laugh track was missing. After watching that show for nearly all of my 50 years and expecting to hear the laugh track as part of the experience, I found it's absence to be very distracting. Or at least very weird for those 5-10 minutes.

 

[BillJ]

TV is now a wasteland. I finally cancelled my cable when I realized the only thing I was watching was NFL Network and Modern Family to the tune of two hundred bucks a month.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Television is a lot different than it was even in the 1990's, not to mention when the "Flying Nun" was on in the 1960's.

Now, there is almost infinite choices in what one wants to see, and that they can see what they want when they want to watch it. Cable networks are churning out great original series, and some awful ones as well.

I live in China and watch my content over the internet or I buy pirated DVD's. I like Modern Family too, and I can get it here on Thursday morning about 10 AM China time from a website. In the United States, one can watch www.hulu.com, or network programming from the websites themselves (www.nbc.com for example) anytime. I cannot, because of a (stupid) copyright law than disallows content to be streamed outside the country.

In short, if I lived in the United States, I would never buy cable, I like watching shows with no commercials and DVD's. I hope in the near future, television and the internet can merge together and just show their content online with commercials. For example, there could be a website called CBS/Portugal that shows CBS shows with Portugese commercials and an option of local subtitles or dubbing of the series. Maybe one day this will happen, probably not though.

I like this website to watch new series. No commercials. Go nuts.
*snip* last link a bit dodgy

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In short, if I lived in the United States, I would never buy cable, I like watching shows with no commercials and DVD's. I hope in the near future, television and the internet can merge together and just show their content online with commercials.

Economically, somebody's gotta be subscribing to cable or the shows you steal will not be produced. If & when online distribution channels actually amount to anything, it will either be because they're charging you to subscribe, or shoving more ads at you, or both. Localized online distribution sounds plausible in the future, but the underlying economic model will be the same. One way or the other, everyone pays (unless they're thieves of course.)

I like this website to watch new series. No commercials. Go nuts.

Be careful about posting links like that. If that's a pirate site, TPTB here take a dim view of such things. I suppose it's because Paramount could come down on them like a ton of bricks if it got out of hand...

 

[Warped9]

Some of us who were present during the Flying Nun days find ourselves, on a daily basis, either shaking our heads in disbelief or outright laughing our asses off at what the young people today call entertainment.

Preach on, man.

I used to watch quite a bit of television. Now I watch practically nothing except for the occasional hockey game.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Red Green is Canadian, you know.

And they sweetened (or invented whole cloth) laugh tracks on British comedies too, y'know.

Red Green is different. Not just because it's Canadian (although that is a factor ). Tickets to its tapings were routinely sold. Anyone could go. And when they did, they knew all the laughter was real.

This show is funny enough that its audience provides all the laughter they need. Any show that needs 'sweetening' or other such fakery, is - by definition - not funny enough to stand on its own.

And like I said, Corner Gas manages just fine without ANY laughs being heard.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Some of us who were present during the Flying Nun days find ourselves, on a daily basis, either shaking our heads in disbelief or outright laughing our asses off at what the young people today call entertainment

Ain't that the truth?

Christopher is absolutely right. The 60s were a cornucopia of creativity in Pop Culture, from TV and movies to comic books and literature, to music and art. There was color and variety and insanity and social relevance and comfort and challenge; not to mention an explosion of unique creators. Now most everything is dull and gray and homogenous, and the audience is terrified of anything adult or thought-provoking-- because that would be "cheesy."

We need more shows like Pushing Daisies, where they weren't afraid to include claymation effects, or Sanctuary, where they aren't afraid to stick in a Bollywood dance sequence here and there.

 

[Harvey]

If you want a series that isn't afraid to venture into claymation, you should watch Community. It's a brilliant sitcom that did an entire episode in claymation this season.

Of course, you're looking back at the 1960s with plenty of nostalgia. It was in 1961, after all, that FCC chairman Nestor Minow declared television to be a "vast wasteland." And in terms of movies, the 1960s was when the studio system was in a major decline. It wasn't until late in the decade that the Hollywood Renaissance begun (around the time of Bonnie and Clyde, released late in 1967).