Editing Laugh track (section)

===Radio===
Before radio and television, audiences experienced live comedy performances in the presence of other audience members. Radio and early [[television producer]]s used recordings of live shows and later studio-only shows attempted to recreate this atmosphere by introducing the sound of laughter or other crowd reactions into the soundtrack.

Jack Dadswell, former owner of [[WWJB]] in Florida, created the first "laughing record".<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Tally Tags Talkers Best|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jRgEAAAAMBAJ&q=jack+dadswell+billboard+laugh&pg=PT68|magazine=Billboard|date=September 1945}}</ref>

In 1946, [[Jack Mullin]] brought a [[Magnetophon]] magnetic tape recorder back from Radio Frankfurt, along with 50 reels of tape; the recorder was one of the magnetic tape recorders that [[BASF]] and [[AEG (German company)|AEG]] had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5&nbsp;mm tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality [[analog audio]] sound; [[Alexander M. Poniatoff]] then ordered his [[Ampex]] company to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophon for use in radio production.<ref name=mullin>{{cite web|url=http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_john_mullin_man/index.html |title=Audio John Mullin Man |publisher=Mixonline.com |date=1999-10-01 |access-date=2013-07-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130414203936/http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_john_mullin_man/index.html |archive-date=2013-04-14 }}</ref> [[Bing Crosby]] eventually adopted the technology to pre-record his radio show, which was scheduled for a certain time every week, to avoid having to perform the show live, as well as having to perform it a second time for West Coast audiences.

With the introduction of this recording method, it became possible to add sounds during [[post-production]]. Longtime engineer and recording pioneer [[Jack Mullin]] explained how the laugh track was invented on Crosby's show:
{{blockquote|The hillbilly comic [[Bob Burns (comedian)|Bob Burns]] was on the show one time, and threw a few of his then-extremely racy and off-color folksy farm stories into the show. We recorded it live, and they all got enormous laughs, which just went on and on, but we couldn't use the jokes. Today those stories would seem tame by comparison, but things were different in radio then, so scriptwriter [[William Morrow (screenwriter)|Bill Morrow]] asked us to save the laughs. A couple of weeks later he had a show that wasn't very funny, and he insisted that we put in the salvaged laughs. Thus the laugh-track was born.<ref name="Kitman">{{cite news |first=Marvin |last=Kitman |title=Don't Make Me Laugh |work=Channels of Communication |date=August–September 1981}}</ref>}}