In 1999, Time magazine called the laugh track, “one of the hundred worst ideas of the twentieth century.” Recorded or “canned” laughter has been used to “sweeten” the sound tracks of television ...

Emmy-winning sound mixer Carroll Pratt, who was at the forefront of the development of the laughtrack, died Nov. 11 in Santa Rosa, Calif., of natural causes. He was 89. Pratt shared six primetime ...

Once a staple of the American sitcom, the canned laughs of yesteryear have all but died out. Laugh tracks — or pre-recorded and sometimes even live audience laughter that once cued at-home viewers ...

The history of ‘the laugh track’ says much about what the makers of television thought of their audiences, writes Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Charley Douglass didn’t like the laughter he was hearing.

In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh Some audiences love it, and some audiences hate it, but the laugh track—which ...

I ran into an old episode of Hogan’s Heroes the other day that stuck me as odd. It didn’t have a laugh track. Ironically, the show was one where two pilots were shown, one with and one without a laugh ...