David poses the question.
Slate started a podcast called Decorder and the first episode was about the history of the laugh track (both the laff box machine and sweetening live studio laughter). I know in the past you've talked about having to kill laughs because it made the show run long. Did you have any other say into how the laughs were "mixed."
On the shows where I was the showrunner I had total say. We would go to the final sound mix, Bobby Douglass would plug in his laugh machine, and we would sit with him frame by frame. We chose to be very sparing with the laugh machine. Whenever possible we would use the actual laugh from the show. Sometimes we would cheat if there were two takes. Just as we’d use the best performance of the two takes, we used the biggest laugh reaction.
Also, we don't write multi-camera shows that have a joke a second. We'd rather have no laughs for most of a page building to a truly big laugh. So we were perfectly content with lots of lines not supplemented by artificial laughter.
But it’s a matter of taste. There are some producers who really lean on that machine, pumping in loud boisterous phony laughs every second. Believe me, they’re not fooling anybody. All they’re doing is turning off viewers.
I see the need for them on multi-cam shows because the audience’s reaction is part of the mix, but if I ran a single-camera show I would not use a laugh track. This was our constant (and pretty much only) fight with CBS on MASH. They insisted we employ a laugh track. I used to say, “Where are these people? Is there a set of bleachers in the Swamp?” The only concession they gave us was in the OR.
A couple of concluding nuggets.
Bobby Douglass’ dad Charles invented the laugh machine.
And did you know that Bobby often adds laughs to live events like award shows? But in those cases, they’re actually needed.
from By Ken Levine
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