Why do sitcoms use laugh boxes instead of actual people?

Question

At least I think they use laugh boxes. If you pay attention to many different sitcoms today you can hear the all of the laughs are identical. And plus they laugh at all the jokes including the lamest ones.

Answer 1

I've sat in on a few tapings myself, and I will say, for the most part, that the "laughing" you hear is "real." There used to be "applause" lights that would indicate to people when to clap at the end of scenes, but that's fallen out of fashion.

Keep in mind, however, that this is an audience of people who are kind of jazzed to see some famous (or semi-famous) actors and the magic of television production taking place before their eyes; there's an "audience warm-up" guy (usually a struggling stand-up comedian) who sets the audience at ease between scenes and keeps them excited about the show; and there's always that slim hope that you'll hear your own laugh when the show airs. So these are people who are going to be willing to laugh at things they might not laugh at (or laugh as loud as they would) if they were just watching the show at home.

Moreover, with sitcoms there are usually TWO tapings of the same episode with different audiences; this is done mainly to give the director/editor the flexibility to select additional takes for the final product, but also, to pick and choose between the two different laugh tracks--one audience may have laughed at a particular joke louder than another audience.

And, in some cases, the live laughter is indeed bolstered by some pre-recorded laughing. But generally, there are no "laugh boxes."

Answer 2

Most shows have an audience. You sometimes see them season finales. They probably use a box though they flashes LAUGH when they are supposed to laugh whether it's funny or not. Some shows may use laugh boxes though. They may use them because the stuido isn't big enough for an audience or they don't want people on the set. But sometimes in shows you can even hear people coughing in the audience.

Answer 3

Most sitcoms today do not use laugh tracks...I know this because I grew up in Los Angeles and sat in on many show tapings. Some old shows -- mostly during the 70s did the laugh track thing -- but go to L.A. and you can sit in on any show you choose -- and laugh loudy knowing it will be on t.v. a week later.

Answer 4

They do use laugh boxes. The reason is because most of the time they are not funny. If it were the live audience laughing everyone would know they were stupid for laughing at something that is not funny.

Answer 5

They don't want to do a live performance, the actors wouldn't be able to do everything without laughing, didn't you ever see the live episode of Will and Grace?

Answer 6

Laughter
The study of laughter provides a novel approach to the mechanisms and evolution of vocal production, perception and social behavior


This article originally appeared in the January-February 1996 issue of American Scientist.

Consider the bizarre events of the 1962 outbreak of contagious laughter in Tanganyika. What began as an isolated fit of laughter (and sometimes crying) in a group of 12- to 18-year-old schoolgirls rapidly rose to epidemic proportions. Contagious laughter propagated from one individual to the next, eventually infecting adjacent communities. The epidemic was so severe that it required the closing of schools. It lasted for six months.

The Tanganyikan laughter epidemic is a dramatic example of the infectious power of laughter--something that many of us may have experienced in our own lives. Many readers will be familiar with the laugh tracks of television situation comedies—attempts to stimulate contagious laughter in viewers—and the difficulty of extinguishing their own "laugh jags," fits of nearly uncontrollable laughter. Have you ever been overcome by a comparable urge to chant "hello-hello-hello?" Rather than dismissing contagious laughter as a behavioral curiosity, we should recognize it and other laugh-related phenomena as clues to broader and deeper issues.

Clearly, laughter is a powerful and pervasive part of our lives—an important component of that biobehavioral bedrock of our species known as human nature. Laughter's significance has been recognized at various times and in various ways by such scientific and philosophical dignitaries as Aristotle, Kant, Darwin, Bergson and Freud. Yet aside from a general appreciation that laughter is good for us—"the best medicine"—and is somehow associated with humor, we know little about laughter itself.

My approach to understanding laughter is one that a visiting extraterrestrial might take were it to encounter a group of laughing human beings. What would the visitor make of the large bipedal animals emitting paroxysms of sound from a toothy vent in their faces? A reasonable approach would be to describe the simplest and most obvious aspects of the noisy behavior: its physical characteristics, the rules that govern its expression, characteristics of the animals emitting the sounds (such as gender), the mechanism of sound production, and whether similar sounds are made by related species. To Earthlings this naturalistic approach is known as ethology—a biologically oriented scientific discipline devoted to understanding what animals do and how and why they do it. Ethologists treat behavior as an evolutionary adaptation. The species-wide distribution of laughter and its stereotypical (and simple) structure suggests that the behavior has strong genetic and neurophysiological bases—qualities attractive to those who wish to understand the mechanisms and natural history of behavior.

During the past eight years I have been observing human laughter in various natural habitats—shopping malls, classrooms, sidewalks, offices and cocktail parties—with the investigative spirit of our hypothetical alien. Observing everyday behavior in these settings has provided an opportunity to appreciate laughter as a social vocalization of the human animal. These studies have produced some unexpected insights into the phenomenon of human laughter—its social nature, the lawful relationship between laughter and speech, gender differences and the biological basis of contagion.

Answer 7

Most sitcoms are so UNfunny... and UNoriginal, they NEED laughtrack boxes to make them appear funny.

It doesnt work....

Answer 8

So you will think the lame joke is funny

Answer 9

That's because they are not funny. It would take an idiot to laugh at that insipid crap.

Answer 10

because the show is not that funny