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.

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 ...

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 ...

Love it or loathe it -- or just go with it -- the television laugh track remains a small-screen staple after five decades of viewer-assisted frivolity. For that triumph or disgrace, one person can be ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The rebooted 'Night Court' on NBC, starring Melissa Rauch and John Larroquette, is one of several new multicam sitcoms fueling the ...