Why do TV shows have laugh tracks?

The legendary British actor David Niven once called the existence of canned laughter, or the ‘laugh track’, ‘the greatest affront to public intelligence I know’. He was producing the US TV anthology series ‘Four Star Playhouse’ at the time, and scorned the ‘wild indiscriminate mirth’. “I shall blackball the notion if it ever comes up,” he said. “Not that it will. We shall carry on without mechanical tricks.”

But while Niven might have despised it, it’s been an admittedly rather odd part of TV comedy for generations, and is still used today. But why?

It was invented by Charles ‘Charley’ Douglass, an American TV sound engineer for CBS, in 1950. The necessity arose from the sometimes unexpected reactions from live studio audiences. Douglass noted that they could not always be relied upon to laugh at the right moments. Sometimes they would not laugh enough, other times too much, and for too long. So he decided to do something about it – to augment, or enhance audience reaction to jokes at just the right moment. It made its debut on ‘The Hank McCune Show’, and was also used on ‘The Red Skelton Show’ and ‘The Jack Benny Show’. Its effect was pretty seamless, meaning that few in the industry even noticed it going on.

But as shows moved from live performances to recorded video, his invention became a integral part of the editing process. And then, as shows moved away from recording in front of live audiences to recording solely in studios without an audience, the practice continued in order to ‘smooth out’ transitions between scenes being cut together, and Douglass’s invention became an industry standard, appearing on everything from ‘Bewitched’ and ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ to ‘The Brady Bunch’.

Amazingly, his invention, on which Douglass had a complete monopoly and used in secret, was a physical machine, known as ‘the laff box’. It stood two feet tall, and was supposedly operated like a musical organ. He kept it secured with padlocks, with only those in his immediate family knowing what it looked like, and how to use it. The original was unearthed in an episode of the ‘Antiques Roadshow’ in the US in 2010, and valued at $10,000, a figure which seems derisory considering its importance in the TV industry.

Douglass couldn’t maintain a monopoly forever, mind. The practice soon became ubiquitous, and not just in the US. In the UK it appeared on every comedy show from ‘Are You Being Served?’ to ‘The Good Life’. Some hated it, however. Larry Gelbert wanted it out of his pioneering show ‘M*A*S*H’, because he wanted realism. He was overruled by CBS.

But its influence did begin to fade. Shows like Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s ‘The Office’, indebted to the ‘mockumentary’ style of the likes of Christopher Guest, later eschewed it. As have hit shows since, like ‘Modern Family’, ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, ’30 Rock’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’ in recent years.

But then again, ‘Seinfeld’ still used it, despite being an almost scholarly example of the TV sitcom, as have shows like ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘King of Queens’ through to ‘Two and a Half Men’ and ‘2 Broke Girls’. ‘Cheers’ proclaimed it was ‘filmed before a live studio audience’ after the opening titles, but there would likely have been some laugh track in there too. Studies have also shown that people are more likely to laugh at shows if they hear others laughing along with them, whether they’re coming out of the TV or otherwise.

Elsewhere, there’s a whole rash of YouTube videos where shows known for their laugh tracks like ‘Friends’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ have had them removed, and others that don’t have laugh tracks having them added in. The results are… well, just weird. Which, oddly, seems to make the factors surrounding whether a show suits a laugh track or not even more blurry.

Some just do. Some really, really don’t.

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