The laugh track, otherwise known as the cringest sound in modern Television. It’s the sound
we all love to hate, but it also peppers the soundscapes of some of our favorite shows.
There’s good reason to wonder if the laugh track was ever really funny, or if it was
always destined for TV hall of infamy. So today I want to dive into where this weird
sound effect comes from, why it emerged, and why it’s still punctuating punchlines in
comedy shows today.
So when did canned laughter and fake yucks emerge? And why?
Well for that piece of TV comedic history we can all thank a man named Charles Douglass.
Gina Giotta, professor of communication and technology at California State University
Northridge, traces the laugh tracks insertion into early television back to its non visual
mass media predecessor: the radio.
According to Giotta, the laugh track wasn’t originally about papering over terrible jokes
and missed punchlines, but rather a way to control the unpredictable responses of studio
audiences that were a hold over from radio broadcast days.
In the late 1920s two comics named Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn invented the live studio audience
as a way to bring the rowdiness and animation of their vaudeville and live performances
into the creepy quiet of the recording studio. They decided that their performances (and
the jokes they told) would be better if they were able to feed off of the energy of real
reactions of a studio audience. So they rallied up a group of stagehands to watch their show
and laugh at their gags and punchlines.
While other comedians viewed the introduction of a bunch of audience plants as the equivalent
of a comedic crutch, home listeners responded positively to the insertion of these audience
surrogates. In fact most reported that the canned laughs made the performances more enjoyable,
rather than less funny, because it made them feel more at ease responding to the jokes
at home.
But those early notes of “filmed in front of a studio audience” and the resulting
laughter were more organic in the 1920s and 1930s than they are today. So when did we
take the leap from hiring folks to cut up in the studio, to laugh tracks that either
override (or in some cases entirely replace) organic audience laughter?
Well that brings us to 1954 and back to Charles Douglass. After serving as a Radar engineer
for the Navy in WWII he returned home to work for CBS as the technical director of their
LA studios.
He invented the ‘‘Laff Box” (along with that kind of funky spelling) to smooth out
the technical difficulties of relying on studio audiences during live broadcasts. So the track
wasn’t really meant to fix bad jokes. Rather it was meant to help out the bumpy transition
early TV had as it moved from doing all live broadcasts, to finally having pre-recorded
shows.
Douglass’ recorded laughs also took out some of the audience response ticks that are
a normal part of live performance, but can register as disorienting and grating to viewers
at home. For example if there was one guy who kept laughing before the joke was over,
his voice could be dimmed or edited out entirely. And if a joke was particularly funny (so funny
that the laughter didn’t die down in time for people to catch the next bit of dialogue)
then it could be turned down entirely so viewers at home could actually hear the show.
Giotta also notes that laugh tracks helped to differentiate early television as a medium
that was separate from film. Before technology allowed us to watch movies at home, films
were reserved for movie theatres which already had audience response built in...because there
were audiences. Early TV needed a way for folks to differentiate pre-recorded scripted
shows from moving pictures, and the laugh track helped to sweeten that move.
So they served a rather technical purpose at the beginning of TV history, but why did
this noise that usually gets bashed for making us flinch more than it makes us laugh actually
stick around?
Well the short answer is: we’re all a bunch of lying liars because as much as we love
to hate on the laugh track, research shows it still kind of works.
Even though the laugh track gag has become synonymous with the idea of mass produced
shows and the absence of “genuine” humor, that isn’t always the case. Many multi camera
shows that use laugh tracks are actually still shot in front of a live studio audience. Think
classic sitcoms like Seinfeld or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But often those shows have
sound engineers who will “sweeten” the sound of the audience to facilitate the recording.
So the yucks are real, but the volume, duration, and pitch can be slightly altered to smooth
out the rough edges.
Also according to a 2004 journal article Joseph M. Moran et al from the Department
of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, those canned laugh tracks are sometimes
placed where real laughter already occurs.
In a test they ran episodes of Seinfeld (which has a laugh track) and episodes of The Simpsons
(which doesn’t). The episodes were both played and the study found that moments detected
as “humorous” remained roughly the same, regardless of whether or not the laugh track
kicked in to indicate when the audience should laugh. And in the case of Seinfeld (the show
that already has a laugh track embedded into the episodes) “...laugh track moments
can be considered to have a greater percentage of humorous content than the remainder of
the episode.” So the tracks weren’t covering up jokes that were real stinkers, but actually
aligned with places of genuine humor and mirth.
Also in an article for NBC, Bill Kelley (one of the researchers from Dartmouth involved
in the study) notes that sometimes "We're much more likely to laugh at something funny
in the presence of other people.” So hearing some else lose it over a joke can decrease
our inner awkward turtle and increase our ability to cut loose and just laugh. And that’s
about as much science as I’m going to do for this episode.
So even though the laugh track has a bad rap, it still sticking around because it helps
us to loosen up when we’re watching a show (even though it’s gotten a reputation as
a background noise controlled by big studios to force us to laugh at their stinker shows).
So what do you think? Anything else to add to this timeline of TV’s favorite sound?
Anything else to add on the science of humor and what makes our brains associate certain
noises with certain emotions? I’ve wanted to do an episode about the use of the theremin
in horror movies for ever… but we’ll see if that happens.
Drop all of your comments and questions below. And if you like Origin of Everything then
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if you’re into that kind of thing). And I’ll see you guys back here next time!