Editing Laugh track (section)

===1960s===
As the medium evolved, production costs associated with broadcasting live television escalated. Filming in a studio with an audience, as ''I Love Lucy'' or ''[[The Ed Sullivan Show]]'' did, had its limitations as well: half the audience could not see the show from where they were sitting. Douglass was brought in to simulate reactions from scratch for the duration of the entire show.<ref name=neveda/> Producers soon realized how much simpler it was to film a show without an audience present and tailor the reactions during post-production. Directors initially did not allow space for inserting reactions, making sweetening difficult and resulted in dialogue being drowned out. Audience response cards repeatedly came back saying that laughter seemed forced or contrived.<ref name=neveda/> Writers gradually became more conscious of the space required for the laugh track and began timing their scripts around it. Directors gradually left room for as-yet-unheard audience reactions; producers budgeted for post-production so Douglass could edit with greater ease.<ref name="Hobson Help"/>

Most television sitcoms produced during the 1950s and 1960s used the single-camera technique, with a laugh track simulating the absent audience.<ref name=tvparty>{{cite web|url=http://www.tvparty.com/laugh.html|title=TV Party: The Laugh Track|publisher=TVparty.com |access-date=2010-12-27}}</ref> Producers became disenchanted with the multi-camera format; consensus at the time was that live audiences were tense, nervous and rarely laughed on cue.<ref name="Iverson">{{Citation | first = Paul R. | last = Iverson | title = The Advent of the Laugh Track | place = [[Hempstead, New York]] | publisher = Hofstra University Archives | edition = 2nd | year = 1994 }}</ref>

====''Hogan's Heroes''====
[[File:Hogans heroes.JPG|thumb|right|The test to see if a sitcom could survive without a laugh track was performed on the [[pilot episode]] of ''Hogan's Heroes'']]
Network research indicated that the inclusion of a laugh track was considered essential for categorizing a single-camera show as a comedy. This hypothesis was tested in 1965 when CBS conducted an experiment involving its new single-camera sitcom ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'' (1965-71), presenting two versions of the pilot episode to test audiences: one with a laugh track and one without. The version without the laugh track, due in part to the show's more cerebral humor, performed poorly, while the version with the laugh track garnered a more favorable reception. Consequently, ''Hogan's Heroes'' was broadcast with the laugh track, and CBS subsequently incorporated laugh tracks into all of its comedic programming.<ref name="Kitman"/>

Sitcom laugh tracks differed, depending on the style of the show. The more outlandish the show, the more invasive the laugh track. Shows like ''[[Bewitched]]'', ''[[The Munsters]]'', ''[[I Dream of Jeannie]]'' and ''[[The Beverly Hillbillies]]'' relied heavily on laugh tracks, while more subdued programs, like ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'', ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' and ''[[My Three Sons]]'', had more modulated laughter. Certain shows, like ''[[Get Smart]]'', featured a laugh track that became more invasive as the series progressed, while shows like ''[[M*A*S*H (TV series)|M*A*S*H]]'' toned down the laughter as the series became more dramatic; it was entirely absent during [[operating room]] scenes.<ref name=neveda/>

By the mid-1960s, nearly every U.S. sitcom was shot using the single camera and was fitted with a laughter track. Only a handful of programs, such as ''[[The Joey Bishop Show (sitcom)|The Joey Bishop Show]]'', ''[[The Dick Van Dyke Show]]'' and ''[[The Lucy Show]]'' used studio audiences but augmented the real laughter via "sweetening."<ref name="Hobson Help"/>