Summary
- Laugh tracks were once a necessary tool to convince audiences that TV comedies were funny, but they have fallen out of favor in modern comedy shows.
- The use of laugh tracks in traditional sitcoms was a way for studios to show they were keeping up with modern trends, but creators were not always fond of them.
- The decline of laugh tracks is connected to the shift towards single-camera comedies that have more flexibility and ambition, with humor that is gradually built rather than relying on immediate laughs.
There was a time when it felt like comedy shows couldn’t successfully exist without laugh tracks, but TV stopped using them all of a sudden. Those who grew up watching shows like Seinfeld, Frasier, and Friends might find it hard to adapt to the current state of comedy, with shows that verge so clearly on drama, such as The Bear, or notorious mockumentaries, such as The Office and Parks and Recreation, dominating the scene.
Just as the older generations may be surprised by the lack of laugh tracks nowadays, traditional sitcoms from the ’80s and 90s might strike new audiences as rather odd. Clash of ages aside, the entertainment machine is constantly changing, and there are a number of reasons why the old format fell into disuse.
Why Comedy Shows Started Using Laugh Tracks
To understand the impact of laugh tracks on comedy TV, it’s first necessary to break down the term “sweetened,” used to describe the signature audience laughter fans tend to hear in their favorite shows. Initially, laugh tracks came in handy in radio shows that needed an extra hand in convincing the audience they were, in fact, funny. When it came to TV, the shows had to settle with a single camera, and there was no other alternative, but to film each scene multiple times from different angles. This technique didn’t work well with a live audience: since the sound of their laughter was coming from different positions, the sound was inconsistent.
To fix this issue or to make up for a joke that didn’t land, editors started the tradition of “sweetening” the audience’s recorded laughter in a way that would perfectly fit the scene. Ever since laugh tracks became a recurring trend — or, better, a must-have aspect of comedy shows — there has been discourse against it, defending that the TV shouldn’t tell audiences when to laugh: viewers are supposed to make up their own minds about what’s funny or not. That didn’t stop laugh tracks from sticking around even when a set-up of multiple film cameras was implemented.
Creators weren’t entirely fond of this so-called canned laughter, but studios heavily encouraged their use in order to fit the prevalent model. Regardless of how archaic it may seem now, the whole technology behind the laugh tracks was an innovative device. For studios, it was a way to show the audiences how they were evolving and keeping up with modern trends. It wasn’t only the Friends generation that grew up watching comedies with laugh tracks: the tradition dates back to the 1950s, when disruptive shows like I Love Lucy were on the air.
In some ways, the laugh track on TV shows can be described as manipulated theater. While the live audience enhances the show’s strengths, the scenes must unfold independently of their reaction. In this context, canned laughter was a supplementary need in conventional TV comedy, but needed to be tamed in order to fit each scene correctly. Looking back at shows like Friends or Seinfeld, it’s clear how episodes were meticulously crafted to give space to the laugh tracks, with long pauses between jokes and actors holding out their expressions for as long as they can.
Why Multi-Cam Sitcoms Were Replaced By Single-Cam Comedies
The death of the laugh tracks is directly linked to the new prevalent model of comedies on TV, which rely much more on the single-cam format than the less frequent multi-cam approach. In this new context, even the term “sitcom” seems to be losing its meaning. Sitcoms are supposed to have a continuing set of characters who occupy themselves in a fixed set of locations. These days, the so-called sitcoms are visibly more ambitious and flexible: one look at Community‘s awe-inspiring Paintball episodes, and it’s clear that things aren’t as straightforward as they were in the 20th century.
Multi-camera sitcoms represented the more traditional format of comedy TV shows, defined by scenes filmed in front of a live studio audience. On the other hand, single-cam comedies are recorded without audiences: their scripts are less technical and resemble those of a movie. The humor itself takes a different turn. After all, the laugh tracks don’t fit there anymore. Shows like Modern Family, The Office, and Silicon Valley all fit in the single-cam category, for example. On the other hand, the end of The Big Bang Theory in 2019 seemed to indicate the definitive death of canned laughter: it was the last big hit show to use it — and, consequently, bury it.
The discourse about laugh tracks manipulating the audience’s emotions didn’t quite land in the past, but nowadays, it’s reasonable to think their absence is directly linked to the turn that humor has taken over the years. Everything is more free-spirited now, and therefore, viewers have the freedom to regard humor in whatever way they want. Instead of one-liners, modern comedies are much more focused on gradual, orchestrated jokes that are properly built before delivery. Comedy is no longer immediate, and laughs are no longer a requirement to feel amused.
However, it’s not that comedies, in particular, are changing: it’s TV in general. Nowadays, seasons get shorter and episodes get longer, aiming at a cinematic status that shouldn’t be there in the first place — it’s almost as if TV just doesn’t want to be TV anymore. The current state of the entertainment industry seems to be searching for ultimate uniformity, and part of this process is losing key trademarks that belong to the past and the past only.
