The industry’s ambivalence toward the practice was best summed up in a cursory Billboard magazine item in 1955: “TV production chief Babe Unger hates canned laugh tracks, but thinks audience ...

more recently known in the trade as "sweetened" audience laughter, canned laughter to its enemies, is finally stone-cold dead in its eighth decade. Many, it is fair to say, will not mourn.

What in the wow is "canned laughter" and how in the world does it work? Join Mindy and Guy Raz as they explore the funny business of our brains on canned laughs! It's the Who, What, When ...

When was the last time you spared a thought about sitcom laugh tracks? Probably years. Maybe decades? Sitcoms with background laughter have seemed almost dead, definitely and firmly dying, for a ...

For Friends, the sitcom filled with hilarious and quotable moments, some scenes are permanently included in history, as they ...

Adding canned laughter to the end of a punchline increases how funny we find a joke, but not as much as real laughter, finds a new study. Adding canned laughter to the end of a punchline increases ...

The industry’s ambivalence toward the practice was best summed up in a cursory Billboard magazine item in 1955: “TV production chief Babe Unger hates canned laugh tracks, but thinks audience ...

There is a creepy part of this. The original Laff Box used to add canned laughter to TV shows (yes, its name included a double ff “laff” and it was indeed an intricate box) contained 320 ...