A laugh track, laughter soundtrack, laughter track, canned laughter or a laughing audience is a separate soundtrack invented by Charles Douglass, with the artificial sound of audience laughter, made to be inserted into TV comedy shows and sitcoms. The first television show to incorporate a laugh track was The Hank McCune Show in 1950.[1]
Before television, audiences often experienced comedy, whether performed live on stage, on radio, or in a movie, in the presence of other audience members. Television producers attempted to recreate this atmosphere in its early days by introducing the sound of laughter or other crowd reactions into the soundtrack of television programs.
Sweetening is a technique in which pre-recorded laughter is used to augment the response of the real studio audience if they did not react as strongly as desired. Laugh tracks have been used in some traditionally animated television series, which do not have live audiences. The Flintstones and The Jetsons originally aired with laugh tracks, but later aired with the laugh track removed.[2] Other cartoons that at least originally had laugh tracks include The Pink Panther Show, Scooby-Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, and the very first episodes of Rocky and His Friends.
In parts of East Asia, laugh tracks are often loud and exaggerated in comedy-variety shows despite them being filmed with small live audiences. The Hong Kong game show Minutes to Fame is one of the recognizable shows that uses a large number of laugh tracks, which sometimes cover up the singing or dialogue. In Japan the use of laugh tracks is almost unheard of, and is derided as being artificial; comedy and variety shows not taped before a live audience frequently feature the crew behind the camera as the "audience," and they can be heard laughing or applauding.
A well-known gag often used in satirical comedy is the use of a laughter track which cuts off unnaturally abruptly after each burst of laughter or applause, emphasizing its artificial nature and therefore its implied insincerity. Shows such as Monty Python's Flying Circus pioneered this gag. The sound of laughter has even been portrayed as emerging from a can marked 'Canned Laughter' as if it were a product. The sound emerges whenever the can is opened.
In some cases, laugh tracks are used as a source of humor in themselves. For example, the video game, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, features a laugh track after certain lines of text dialog used for humorous effect, particularly since there being a live audience would be impossible for a video game.
