People often confuse "laugh track" with "audience laughter," and think that since one is bad, the other must be too.

It's interesting, because audience laughter is still acceptable for certain types of shows. Late night talk shows still have audiences, as does SNL. Standup specials of course use live audiences, and sitcoms that ultilize standup in them, like Louie or Master of None, use a live audience for the standup segments.

It seems like anything we consider to be "live" is acceptable to have an audience. For example, when 30 Rock did their two live episodes, they shot them multi-camera with a live audience, even though none of their other episodes are shot like that.

There have been some great recent shows that were shot multi-camera, and I think that while the "95% of them suck" idiom is mostly true, it's true for all show types. I mean, 95% of single-camera, "laugh track" free sitcoms suck too.

I think there's tradeoffs between both multi-camera and single camera shows in how you can shoot and present it, but one isn't inherently better than the other.

I think one of my favorite sitcoms, Titus, also fully utilized the live audience. Most of their episodes have the "main story" on a single set, which allowed them to keep the momentum up while filming with the audience. They then hired a director that had experience directing live shows like award shows, mixing live footage and clips. For the filming, they'd shoot the on-set scenes live, then cut to showing the pre-recorded scenes to the audience, then cut back. So even on the pre-recorded scenes you have live audience laughter, as they reacted to the scenes in context to the rest of the episode.

Same. Couldn't get past two episodes. More like "Insufferable Kimmy Schmidt" for me. And I loved "30 Rock"!

I don't see the difference between using a laugh track or forcing the audience to laugh at specific times. I mean, you're told when you go in, that you MUST laugh and they'll even tell you when to do so. So to me, that really isn't any different than just using an automated laugh track.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. It makes for broad delivery and awkward pauses in both situations.

Crowded is an example of a new sitcom i checked out because i quite like Patrick Warburton from Rules of engagement but it doesn't quite have the right cast chemistry

Are you speaking from experience? I've only been to talk shows, but on those there's only really applause cues, for going to and coming back from commercials. There certainly weren't laughter cues.

I've never heard of an audience being "forced" to laugh; I'm not even sure how that'd work. I mean, what's the punishment for not laughing?

Studio audiences are certainly "primed" to laugh. They have comedians that come out to "warm up" the crowd, and simply by virtue of being there live watching a show you're (presumably) a fan of is going to make you more inclined to laugh than, say, someone half-bored flipping channels. But they're not the lie that a laugh track is, inserting laughter where none was. With a live audience show, you know that people actually laughed at the jokes, whether you find them funny or not.

Sitcoms that were filmed in front of studio audiences still almost always had the laughter sweetened in post production.

Editors often need to "smooth out" transitions between cuts where, for example, difference laughter levels may make a cut sound awkward. However, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an editor that says that they artificially inflate laughter on a joke that didn't do well.

The problem with comedy is the wide variations in people's sense of humor. The hit comedy movies and sitcoms probably appeal to widest number of variations.
Unlike other art forms, where if you don't care for it you can still appreciate it's quality and why people like it, with comedy, if you don't think it's funny, it's not. It sucks.

Right now there isn't a single sitcom on tv that I think is funny. These are the past shows that are my favorites. Curious what common denominators they share that defines my sense of humor.

TWO AND A HALF MEN
EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND
DREW CAREY SHOW
THAT 70S SHOW
BECKER
FRASIER
COACH
CHEERS
TAXI
WKRP
BOB NEWHART SHOW
GET SMART
HOGAN'S HEROES
DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
HONEYMOONERS
MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

Those are mostly ensemble shows. Get as many characters in a room and let the jokes fly. Modern comedies like Modern Family or BBT have an A story, a B story and 'lets pair these two up' for a bit then 'pair up these two' and then tie it all together in the closing minutes. I think Seinfeld made that the norm and everyone has followed suit since, maybe even without realizing it.

I'm surprised Friends didn't make your list as it's in a similar vein.

This is correct.

When we went to a show taping we were told to laugh or our family dog would be killed.

i'm starting to warm up to this. Think the cast is pretty good. Alwasy catch this and the Jarard Carmichael show,

I still dvr Crowded but haven't watched past he first couple of episodes, which were uninspiring. So it got better?

I thought Superstore was pretty good, which was surprising to me because the premise seemed awful. Life and Pieces grew on me. Undatable somehow turned into a live show, but I can't tell if it made it better or worse.

I know it's not a sitcom but Jane the Virgin always makes us laugh.

I recently saw a few episodes of "Last Man Standing" with Tim Allen for the very first time and it wasn't bad. Nice cast. Thought the acting was quite good. I even laughed several times. I mean, I'm not talking "Cheers", "Seinfeld" or "Frasier" level here. But it's 10,000 times better than dreck like "2 Broke Girls"

It's not on anymore, but I've gotten hooked on Rules of Engagement. Pefect late night syndicated show.