The sitcom laugh track has finally died after a long illness. Now what were we being made to laugh at all those years?

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 ...

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 ...

When the cameras stopped grinding recently on an installment of I Love Lucy, Co-Star Desi Arnaz turned to thank the studio audience for its laughter during the filming of the show. Slipping up from ...

Critically reviled. Hopelessly dated. Forever near extinction. Yet in a TV landscape full of brutally realistic hits, sitcoms with background laughter are not only still popular, but have become ...

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 ...

Question: Why do TV shows use canned laughter? It just makes the shows less funny. It is very annoying. Answer: It has also been around for close to 70 years. To be sure, some comedies do without.