Laugh tracks have been a staple of sitcoms and 20th-century TV shows, but are they really necessary to make a show funny?
Sound engineer Charles Douglass invented the laugh track in the 1950s. The first-ever laugh track was used on “The Hank McCune Show” when producers recorded laughter as their audience reaction. Now, laugh tracks have become synonymous with shows like “Big Bang Theory” and “Friends.”
Laugh tracks shouldn’t be needed in genuinely hilarious shows; they’re there to enhance unenthusiastic reactions. Remove any laugh track from a show, and its jokes will now be underwhelming.
Many shows chose not to include a laugh track, including “New Girl,” “Brooklyn 99”, “Parks and Rec,” “Modern Family” and “The Good Place.” All of these shows have done well for themselves, but how have they done compared to shows with laugh tracks?
On Rotten Tomatoes, “Friends,” a sitcom with frequent laugh tracks, has a 78% audience rating. The audience rating for a show such as New Girl is 95%.
On the other hand, a show with frequent laugh tracks, “How I Met Your Mother,” has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84%, while “The Office,” released the same year without laugh tracks, has 81%.
The ratings of shows with or without laugh tracks may differ based on other factors, such as plot, characters, and performances, but laugh tracks in modern television still seem outdated.
As television continues to develop, it seems that shows without laugh tracks have found more ways to keep audiences engaged, such as with clever writing and character-driven humor. Shows like “Parks and Rec” and “The Good Place” have proved that genuine humor, delivered through impeccable timing and strong character development, is more appreciated and effective than artificially induced laughter.
