On May 3, 9:28 am, "Kevin M." <[email protected]> wrote: > Um... There was no studio audience for SportsNight
>From a 1998 EW article about laugh tracks: ABC, alas, chose not to believe, and that decision led to some fireworks over one of its new fall entries, Sports Night — a comedy about an ESPN SportsCenter-like show. Imagine Television and Disney's Touchstone Television, producers of the sitcom, wanted to film the show without a live audience or laugh track, which go hand in hand (tracks are used in postproduction to smooth out or enhance live laughs; M*A*S*H is a very rare example of a sitcom that used a track only). Given a choice, network suits insisted it be shot with an audience. ABC's senior VP of comedy programming, Carolyn Ginsburg Carlson, admits there were ''emotional and difficult'' arguments on both sides, but ABC won out. While Ginsburg Carlson and ABC appreciated the producers' concerns about making ''the show feel forced,'' they ultimately felt the laugh track was valid: ''If done right,'' she says, ''it can be wonderful.'' Sports Night exec producer Aaron Sorkin, now resigned to ABC's ultimatum, explains his original reservations: ''Once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me.'' http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,284963,00.html And if "MASH" had come on in the 60s, it wouldn't be that rare of a show, since live audience multi-cam sitcoms didn't start to dominate until "All in the Family" and producers discovered that shooting on tape was cheaper than filming one-camera with a laugh track. It seems to me that the *only* one-camera sitcom with a laugh track this past decade was that Cartoon Network monstrosity whose title escapes me. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
