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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio, Hello,

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Speaker 1: and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a show

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Speaker 1: that believes there's no time like the present to learn

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Speaker 1: about the past. I'm Gay, Blues Yay, and today we're

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Speaker 1: looking at the rise and fall of the infamous laugh track,

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Speaker 1: a bizarre innovation that cued people on when to laugh

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Speaker 1: while watching television. The day was September ninth, nineteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: The laugh track made its TV debut on The Hank

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Speaker 1: McCune Show. Variety magazine reviewed the show's premiere episode and

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Speaker 1: made sure to note the new feature, explaining that quote,

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Speaker 1: although the show is lensed on film without a studio audience,

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Speaker 1: there are chuckles and yucks dubbed in. Whether this induces

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Speaker 1: a jovial mood in home viewers is to be determined,

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Speaker 1: but the practice may have unlimited possibilities if it spread

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Speaker 1: to include canned peals of hilarity, thunderous ovations, and gasps

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Speaker 1: of sympathy. Although it's most commonly associated with TV sitcoms,

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Speaker 1: especially the older ones, canned laughter was first introduced for

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Speaker 1: radio shows. Bing Crosby was one of the technique's earliest

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Speaker 1: proponents in the nineteen forties, as it allowed him to

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Speaker 1: pre record his shows and still make it sound like

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Speaker 1: he was performing for a packed house. The laugh track

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Speaker 1: made its way to television in the nineteen fifties thanks

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Speaker 1: to the efforts of CBS sound engineer Charlie Douglas. At

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Speaker 1: the time, most TV shows were filmed in front of

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Speaker 1: a studio audience, and the crowd's organic reactions were baked

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Speaker 1: into the soundtrack. This annoyed Douglas to no end, as

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Speaker 1: people would often laugh too long, too loudly, or at

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Speaker 1: the wrong moments. In response, the engineer took a page

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Speaker 1: from the rat playbook and began adjusting the audio levels

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Speaker 1: of laughs in post production. He then went a step

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Speaker 1: further by building a bespoke machine that could playback recordings

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Speaker 1: of laughter, most of which he borrowed from the dialogue

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Speaker 1: free mime sketches of the Red Skelton Variety Show. This invention,

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Speaker 1: which Douglas dubbed the laugh Box, resembled a modified typewriter,

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Speaker 1: with each of the three hundred and twenty keys connected

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Speaker 1: to a different kind of laugh. No longer limited to

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Speaker 1: adjusting or subtracting in studio laughs, Douglas was free to

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Speaker 1: insert the exact reaction he wanted for every scripted joke.

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Speaker 1: The first known use of the device was an NBC's

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Speaker 1: short lived sitcom The Hank McCune Show. It only lasted

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Speaker 1: for a single season, but the idea of the laugh

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Speaker 1: track lived on and quickly cemented itself in the new

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Speaker 1: medium of television. In those early days, TV producers embraced

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Speaker 1: the life laughbox as a way to make the viewing

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Speaker 1: experience more communal. After all, people were used to going

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Speaker 1: out for their entertainment, whether it be to a movie

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Speaker 1: theater or a playhouse, and having a shared reaction with

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Speaker 1: a crowd was a big part of the appeal. Canned

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Speaker 1: laughter was not the same thing, but it was convincing

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Speaker 1: enough to give viewers the sense that they weren't really

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Speaker 1: watching or laughing alone. That said, not everyone was a

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Speaker 1: fan of the laugh track. For example, British actor David

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Speaker 1: Niven famously hated the technique, which he found to be

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Speaker 1: disingenuous and insulting. In a nineteen fifty five interview, he'd

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Speaker 1: denounced canned laughter altogether, saying, quote, the laugh track is

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Speaker 1: the single greatest affront to public intelligence I know of,

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Speaker 1: and it will never be foisted on any audience of

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Speaker 1: a show that I have some say about. Other performers

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Speaker 1: took similar stands against pre recorded laughter, including Lucille Ball

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Speaker 1: and Desi Arnaz, who insisted on filming their multi camera

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Speaker 1: sitcom I Love Lucy with a live audience and real laughs.

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Speaker 1: The laugh track's adoption rate remained spotty for its first decade,

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Speaker 1: but that changed once the medium transition from live broadcast

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Speaker 1: to videotaping. The editing process made it harder to hide

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Speaker 1: interruptions in the audience's reactions, and canned laughter provided an

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Speaker 1: easy way to smooth things out or fill in the gaps.

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Speaker 1: Audiences also warmed up to the technique, as evidenced by

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Speaker 1: the many popular shows that featured it in the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: including The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, and

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Speaker 1: The Andy Griffith Show, just to name a few. Even

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Speaker 1: cartoons got in on the act, with The Flintstones, The Jetsons,

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Speaker 1: and Scooby Doo all employing a laugh track, even though

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Speaker 1: it was pretty obvious that the animated shows were not

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Speaker 1: filmed in front of a live audience. American sitcoms became

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Speaker 1: more sophi sticated in the nineteen seventies, as shows like

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Speaker 1: All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and

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Speaker 1: MASH began to portray more nuanced characters and topical storylines. Nonetheless,

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Speaker 1: the now obnoxious laugh track remained a TV staple, although

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Speaker 1: the creators of Mash were at least able to talk

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Speaker 1: CBS executives into letting them leave it out of scenes

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Speaker 1: set in the operating room. By the nineteen eighties, the

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Speaker 1: technique of punctuating or sweetening sitcoms with canned laughter had

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Speaker 1: made its way across the Pond to Britain, turning up

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Speaker 1: in popular shows like Blackadder and Mister Bean. The trend

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Speaker 1: continued in much of the world throughout the nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: with shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends being no

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Speaker 1: less popular for using it. However, the laugh track's five

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Speaker 1: decades of dominance seemingly came to an end at the

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Speaker 1: close of the twentieth century. The UK's The Office ushered

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Speaker 1: in a new aira e of so called cringe comedy,

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Speaker 1: with many of the laughs now coming from awkward interactions

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Speaker 1: rather than traditional punchlines. TV comedies also got quippier and

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Speaker 1: faster paced in the earlier two thousands, with shows like

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Speaker 1: thirty Rock and Arrested Development delivering more jokes per minute

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Speaker 1: than ever before. Suddenly it just didn't make sense to

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Speaker 1: slow things down with a lot of pauses for laughter,

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Speaker 1: especially fake ones. The laugh track hasn't disappeared from television

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Speaker 1: completely since then, but in the age of streaming, it

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Speaker 1: does look increasingly out of place. Not only has the

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Speaker 1: popular style of comedy shifted to become darker and more cynical,

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Speaker 1: the way we engage with it has changed too. The

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Speaker 1: original aim of the laugh track was to help people

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Speaker 1: adjust to a new medium by replicating the communal quality

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Speaker 1: of the old ones, but that's not something we expect today,

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Speaker 1: especially since most shows are now available on demand and

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Speaker 1: without the need to tune in at a certain time.

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Speaker 1: As a result, most audiences no longer want the artifice

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Speaker 1: of canned laughter. What was once a clever trick from

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Speaker 1: a cutting edge medium is now viewed as outdated and

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a joke in its own right.

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Speaker 1: I'm gay, Blues Gay, and hopefully you now know a

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Speaker 1: little more about history today than you did yesterday. If

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Speaker 1: you'd like to keep up with the show, you can

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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show,

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Speaker 1: and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free

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Speaker 1: to send them my way by writing to This Day

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Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to kazb Biased for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see

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Speaker 1: you back here again tomorrow for another day in History

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Speaker 1: class