Laughter Tracks
I think he's wrong. It's all about balance. Some comedies do work better with studio audiences (his are prime examples), but other shows, like Peep Show and The Office wouldn't work nearly as well.
Not the least because the audience wouldn't be laughing enough!?
I don't laugh at The Office anyway but with Peep Show for me it's more smiles than out and out laughs.
In the past I have occasionally had the job of rigging and operating the preview monitors at Televison Centre and Pinewood for sitcoms and they did sometimes have to gee up the studio audiences quite a bit to get them to laugh out loudly. Hence the 'warm up' guy/gal can be so important and during filming they often had a couple of folks waving their arms around cueing the audience when to laugh!
Odd really, in a way.
Also odd I thought was Linehan saying that Father Ted (which I have laughed out loud at) was 'just a vehicle to generate laughter'. I think of it as something more than that for some reason, but I don't know why?
He makes a good, but old point. Graham seems obsessed with studio laughter. He goes on about it a lot on his commentaries for Ted and The IT Crowd. He's right though.
I think use of the laughter track depends on the show, im not really against the laugh track, if a writer or producer or whatever thinks its right for the show, then use it. It doesnt annoy me like it does some people, in fact it can be quite nice to hear people laughing along sometimes. I agree with what linehan said about recording in front of a live audience lifting a script and performances, as Im sure that it does have a very positive effect on some shows. And really, could you imagine a show like 'Only Fools And Horses' without the laugh track? Or for that matter a show like 'Brass Eye' or 'The Office' with one? It wouldnt be the same. So I really think that to use or not to use a laugh track depends solely on the project.
It's all a question of taste and the producer's / director's skill to incorporate this element into a project.
A good example is Operation Good Guys - series one, no soundtrack - and great. Series 2 and 3 wrecked by abrupt moronic shrieking that made you wish that the audience were put to sleep after the filming. For the sake of society. At times it sounds like they were being butchered rather than laughing, it was that grating.
Some laughter tracks are unobtrusive, some are almost vulgar in the volume and brashness. Oddly it's some of the US shows that have the most tasteful and subtle laugh tracks. But others are like a demented harpy screaming "LAUGH YOU BASTARDS. THESE IDIOTS ARE LAUGHING SO WHY AREN'T YOU? LAUGH I TELL YOU!"
Woody Allen in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" reveals his depth of hatred towards audiences being coaxed into laughter through canned laughter, like pavlovian-conditioned non-thinking consumers. He watches in horror as Alan alda's character coldly directs the machine operator. "A small chuckle, here. Now a bigger laugh, and now a belly laugh. Applause. Hold it, hold it. And cut."
If it's genuine laughter from a real audience then that seems more permissible than the garish vomiting of canned laughter from an electronic machine that you play like a piano but without the finesse. But the volume and the tone have to be right, to enhance rather than flood.
Personally not a fan of laughter tracks. I'd prefer to laugh when I want to laugh and not be prodded for the 'right' places. And if I laugh alone in a room full of silent people, then I'm happy with that. I don't really need the approbation of others to appreciate a funny line.
I do like it when a audience laughs on a TV show but I agree that laughter tracks are awful. Two words.....
MY FAMILY.
A live audience is much better.