Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Laugh Tracks

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Laugh tracks have been around since the early 1950s and it’s all thanks to one (reviled) sound engineer who invented them. But as much as people like to hate laugh tracks most shows wouldn’t be at all funny without them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff,

a very special sandwiched edition between our very special two-part episode on sitcoms, right, Chuck? Insert laugh track, Jerry. That's right. Nicely done, Jerry. So we're talking about laugh tracks. Everybody knows what a laugh track is. It's also sometimes called canned laughter. And if you didn't realize that a lot of the sitcoms that you watch have laughter added in, well, prepare to have your socks knocked off because that is the thing. And it's been around for 70, 70 years, a little over. Yeah. And it's a really cool story in that they discovered there was a problem early on with live studio audiences and that sometimes they laughed at the wrong time. Sometimes they didn't laugh at all. Sometimes they laughed too loudly and for too long.

And they had a laughter problem because people are stupid. And so a CBS sound engineer named Charlie Douglas said, you know what? I think I can crack this thing. They've been using laugh tracks and radio forever. Why don't I see if I can put together a library of laughter and use that to augment the laughter and sometimes entirely replace the laughter of the real audience? Yeah. So Charlie Douglas started recording actual people laughing. And you can't, like, you have to be pretty selective when you're recording laughter because there's a lot of times where people are talking or actors are giving dialogue still. So Red Skelton had a show and he was a very famous, very physical comedic actor. He could go long stretches, just entertaining

people without saying a word. So he was a natural source of this laughter that Charlie Douglas went around and recorded. So was the Mime Marcel Marceau. And so he started recording any kind of laughter he did. And he put it all together, spliced tapes together. And his first attempt at a very rudimentary attempt at a laugh track made his debut in 1950 on a show I've never heard of before, Chuck, the Hank McEwen show of you. Nope, never heard of it. But it's historic in that it was the first show that the laugh track debuted on. That's right. And Douglas got pretty into this to put it lightly. He kind of obsessed, it seemed, over getting these laugh tracks just right. I don't think he was happy with just saying like, all right, we got some canned laughter,

we got a couple of versions, let's just go with it. And ended up getting sort of being like a conductor slash magician. And that he had all different kinds. I think he ended up with about 320 different kinds of laughs from uproarious to like just a little bit to a few people tittering, to it rising and falling like a symphony. And the coolest thing about all of this is he did this and put it in a literal physical machine. Right. Actually, like it ended up being called the laugh box, although he tried to call it the audience response duplicator. Or if you, I could totally see in the fifties pretending it's a robot and calling it RD. Yeah. And also audience response duplicator is a pretty good band name, not when I think about it.

No? What kind of music exactly? I don't know. That's your specialty. I go to math rock every time. I don't know what that would be. But yeah, so this box, the laugh box, it was about the size and shape of a filing cabinet, well, a three foot tall filing cabinet, or one meter for friends outside of the US. And it was made by Charlie Douglas himself from like household appliances, parts from an organ that he stripped, and vacuum tubes. And it was really heavy, but it was really effective. Like you said, it had all sorts of different laughs of all types on it. I think it could hold up to 320 different laughs. And again, this is 1950 and this guy basically created a laughing computer. Yeah, there were 32 reels, 10 laughs each. And it had, like you said, it had these,

it looked more like these giant typewriter keys to me as far as like literally how you would engage it. Right. And but you could play it almost like an instrument in that it wasn't just hit one button, you could hit a combination of buttons. If you want to get a very specific kind of laughter. I had no idea this is how this worked. I just thought it was all done in post by just kind of splicing it together with like, you know, hey, just put track one on there or something like that. I had no idea it was a literal machine. It's very, very cool. Yeah. And one of my favorites of all time is the one person lightly laughing at a time. Yeah, those are good. That was really used to great effect in Scooby-Doo, if you think back, like there was very often times where just one person was

kind of like, was that on a laugh track? Yes, it was because the Scooby-Doo animated characters were not performing live in front of a studio audience. Well, I know that. I don't remember there being laughter on Scooby-Doo. Oh, yeah, totally. Anytime Scooby or Shaggy did, you know, built like a seven foot sandwich, there was a laugh track. That would have gotten a laugh track. I haven't seen it in a long time. I'm sure it's totally full of laughter, but I just don't remember. It really holds up, man. Does it really? Yes, especially the original one from like 1969. All right. Well, let's take a break. I'm going to go watch some of those and we'll be back to talk about how laugh tracks were received right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart

podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story

of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mange Shatikler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Did people like laugh tracks? No. Yes and no. Studio executives, a lot of them loved it because it solved a big problem.

But it seems like almost exclusively outside the studio executives, most people weren't too keen on it. No. And this started right out of the gate. The laugh track was derided as phony or corny or whatever. And Charlie Douglas, the inventor of that laugh box, the guy who originated this, he became, I don't want to say a recluse, but as far as the media was concerned, you could not get an interview out of him because I don't know if he took it personally or took it harder just didn't want to put himself out there. But as far as I could tell, he got very wealthy off of this thing. Between the 50s and the 70s, if you heard a laugh track in a show, it was from Charlie Douglas. Yeah, I bet you anything. He was hurt because, I mean, there were people that

said like this has ruined television in some cases. Yeah, like a autotune kind of, I guess. Yeah. He invented autotune too. Not many people know that. Right. He did it all. He ruined everything. And the sound of airplane toilets flushing. Oh, wow. That's a good one, especially if you play one person lightly laughing over the airplane toilet flushing. I still can't believe they haven't solved that yet. Yeah, I know. Because it announces to everybody like everyone look over at the door. I'm about to come out. It's terrible. And I plug my ears. It's just so grating and in your face. Anyway. So in the 70s is when the laugh track kind of hit its heyday along with the heyday

as you have now learned in our sitcoms episode of the live studio audience multi-camera taped show. Right. But it was also the time when it became sort of more of a objective scorn. So that's when you started hearing the famous announcement filmed before a live studio audience just to let people know like maybe we use some canned laughter, but there are also real people here laughing. Yeah, it was a boast. I had no idea why they said that, but it was almost like a disclaimer the way they said it. But really, they were telling you like the laughter you're hearing is human laughter, like genuine stuff. And those were filmed in front of studio audiences. The ones that are weird are the shows like MASH that were not filmed in front of a studio audience.

Right. But there was still that laugh track. But you never thought about it. You were just so used to it. It's very weird, especially if you stop and think about laugh tracks, we'll get into that in a second. But it is a very weird concept the way it's applied. But I saw that almost went away as early as the mid 60s that some CBS studio executives tested the pilot of Hogan's heroes with a laugh track with one focus group without a laugh track with another focus group or maybe the same focus group. I don't know. But the focus group chose the laugh track episode or the laugh track version. And that just cemented laugh tracks for decades to come. You can thank that one focus group for it. Yeah. Interesting pick for the show to do that with,

I think. Like it was interesting enough to have a sitcom about POWs and Nazis. Right. Right. I love the show. It's pretty good. As a kid, I thought Hogan's heroes was great. But yeah, the laugh track is weird. And it's even weirder when you think about animated sitcoms. We talked about the Flintstones. I believe that will be coming up in part two of the sitcoms app. But Flintstones and the Jetsons, they have laugh tracks too, which doesn't make any sense at all. But people just bought it because they were used to it. Yeah, exactly. You just don't even notice it unless you notice it. And then once you notice it, it's hard to stop. But like you said, even Mash had one. And apparently the creator, Larry Gilbert, said he wanted Mash to air

without laughs, quote, just like the actual Korean War. Yeah. But he's still lost. But they gave him the out to not have a laugh track during the medical like surgery scenes. Yeah. It all kind of flowed though. I never really noticed that stuff. Like when they were in the OR that there wasn't a laugh track going generally. Right. In other countries, they have done some interesting things. It's kind of a very American slash UK thing. But in Latin America, apparently they would actually hire laughers to come in like professional laughers. Yeah, reyadors. And they would say laugh at this moment and that moment. And I don't know if it was like that they were just plants in the audience that were supposed to laugh to get everybody else laughing or entire audience were made of

reyadors. I'm not sure. But either way, I guess they issued the laugh track generally. I think it was probably multiple plants to get people going because they have done, I guess, studies. Yeah. But they have shown that laugh tracks, people find things funnier when other people are laughing. So yeah, apparently 15 to 20% when there is can laughter, people are more apt to think something is funny. Yeah. 15 to 20% funnier when you add can laughter to it, which is that's funny in and of itself. This is 15 to 20% funnier. That's hilarious to me. Yeah. How do you measure that? So if you think back, even Seinfeld, Chuck, one of the funniest shows of all time had a laugh track and this was into the 90s, right? The Simpsons managed to launch without one. They never had a

laugh track. I don't think they even jokingly used one. But my point is even Seinfeld up into the 90s had one. And it wasn't until I saw the UK's version of the office credited as the one that really turned the tide. I think the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the UK really broke out and said, we're not going to use this, but it was still used extensively. It wasn't until the office came along and just changed comedy. The comedy involved was presented and written in a way that a laugh track just would not make sense because it was so cringy, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to imagine something like either version of the office or Arrested Development or 30 Rock or Curb Your Enthusiasm with a laugh track. It would be very strange. And speaking of strange,

one of the most fun things you can do is just spend a few minutes of your day watching sitcoms without the laugh track, like classic sitcoms. They've notably done this on YouTube with episodes of Friends and Clips of Friends. And it's just weirdly disconcerting. It's not as funny. And one of the weirdest things is, you know, you don't realize it when you're watching a show with a laugh track, but they're like a stage play. They're waiting for a beat while the people are laughing to say their next line. And it's never more apparent than when that laughter is gone. It's very disjointed and weird. Because it's just silent, right? But then also without the laugh track, I think you are very, very generous to say it's just not as funny. I found it like

not funny at all and actually kind of upsetting to tell you the truth. Like the jokes are like deeply juvenile. They're supported every single one by like a funny facial expression. That's not actually funny. It looks kind of hostile instead. And it becomes clear that Friends is like in no way funny on its own. It like really leaned on the laugh track to make it funny. Did you see the one Ross without laugh track, Psychopath? I know what I will be doing right after we finish recording. Yeah, check it out. Because not only did they remove the laugh track for the scene, but they made it, they changed the color so it was black and white and they put like this brooding music.

It's really, really good. And while we're at just this general thing also should just recommend music lists, music videos. Those are great. Those are some of the funniest things on YouTube when it just shows. Like people dancing around with like sneaker squeaks and then going like, uh. All good stuff. The opposite's pretty funny too, where you take something that's not intended to be funny and add a laugh track. And like way before Space Ghost Coast to Coast, I don't know if it was the same Friends of ours, Dave Willis, who did this too, but somebody put like old episodes of Space Ghost from the 60s on Cartoon Network at night, even before Adult Swim, and just added laugh tracks at like inappropriate places and made

it like genuinely funny. I would like to see, I wonder if anyone's done that with like the office. I'd be curious just to see what that feels like. Yeah, I'm just gonna go spend the rest of the day on the internet watching this stuff. I think I agree. All right. Well, Chuck agreed. I said I was going to go do something else that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.