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After getting to the brink of extinction on ABC, NBC and Fox last year, multicamera comedies staged a comeback this upfront season. While the genre has been alive and well on CBS, the number of multicamera comedies on the other broadcast networks had steadily declined in the past few years to three during the 2009-10 season — the short-lived ABC’s Hank, Fox’s Brothers and NBC’s 100 Questions, which didn’t even air in-season — then to only one this season, ABC’s Better with You, which also has been canceled. But sitcoms rebounded this year, with ABC, Fox and NBC ordering a total of five multicamera comedies: NBC’s Whitney and Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, ABC’s Last Man Standing an
d Work It and Fox’s I Hate My Teenage Daughter. Three of them, Last Men Standing, Whitney and I Hate My Teenage Daughter, are on the fall schedule in key slots — Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing is launching a new comedy block for ABC on Tuesday, while Whitney and Teenage Daughter landed their networks’ cushiest time periods: after The Office and The X Factor, respectively.
The entire comedy genre is on the rise at ABC and NBC, bringing the total of new comedy series orders on ABC, NBC and Fox this upfront to 13 vs. 10 last year and nine the year before. The percentage of multicamera comedies shot up from 10% last year to almost 40% this year.
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This is good from the standpoint of people trying to judge the quality of a sitcom by how many cameras they have, it is dumb. If a show is well written and well acted and entertaining who cares how many cameras they use, or the format. There have been so many funny multi-camera sitcoms that have been hugely successful over time, it was always silly to write them off. Sitcoms in total almost died off, not just multi-camera sitcoms. Sure the single camera shows started digging the way back, but that does not point to multi-camera shows no longer being viable.
In fact I think a multi-camera show is much more likely to fit into the definition of a situation comedy than a single camera show is, often times.
“Whitney” must lose that laugh track immediately. It’s awful. But the show looks promising, minus the horrendous laugh track.
Not a laugh track. Studio audience.
Ironically, people who think they’re too sophisticated for multi-camera sitcoms are often so unsophisticated that they don’t know the difference between an audience and a laugh track.
That said I think comments like these show why the networks aren’t really interested in bringing back multi-camera (despite a few token pickups): multi-cams tend to be more popular than single-cams, and they also tend to be funnier, but it just gets tiresome explaining that, no, it’s not a laugh track and, no, the fact that the sets don’t look real doesn’t mean they’re bad.
Thank you for your comment. It bears repeating.
“People who think they’re too sophisticated for multi-camera sitcoms are often so unsophisticated that they don’t know the difference between an audience and a laugh track.”
Yeah, I was at the Whitney taping and most of those laughs weren’t there. It’s a track, they’re all boosted by a track these days.
The return of the laugh track! Whoo hoo!
Just because Fox wants X-Factor to be as huge as Idol (or bigger) doesn’t mean it is a foregone conclusion (and therefor I Hate My Teenage Daughter doesn’t necessarily have Fox’s cushiest time slot in the fall).
True, but I’m almost positive it’ll do well enough to stick around at the very least.
Finally – more work for the real actor and not the reality bozos!!!
It’s not a “laugh track,” moron. 90% of the time it is the actual recorded sound of the audience laughing. Im so bored by pretentious idiots objecting to “laugh tracks” and “fake canned laughhter”. A multicam show is a play with an invited audience and, yes, they will sometimes laugh.
It’s actually a bit of both. It’s impossible to use the recorded reaction of a studio audience “naked,” so to speak, because the editing process mixes up so many different takes of the same scene. You’d hear audience reaction stutter, stammer, stop and start. It’s required that an editor smooth out the audio, blending one set of laughs or applause to another. And once that can of digital worms is open, it’s inevitable that some of the reaction will be enhanced. It’s like a surgeon fixing a broken nose — as long as she’s in there, why not make it a bit prettier? It’s up to the taste (uh-oh) of the editor, showrunner and network/studio executives to determine how far the dials are twisted. One hopes they err on the side of reality, or at least verisimilitude, but…
Yes, all true. But for the MOST part, it’s a matter of sliding things around, smoothing things out to sync up different takes. But it’s NOT, as most people seem to presume, a “canned” recording of long-dead people in a Moose Lodge somewhere laughing at something unrelated to what’s on screen. The point is, at some point, an audience of people actually laughed at the joke you’re seeing. (Yes, those people may be from a half-way house and being paid to be there, but they nonetheless laughed at the joke.) The problem, at least sometimes, with single-cam stuff is the writers and producers don’t have to convince anyone but themselves that their stuff is gold before they put it out to the world.
Don’t forget that while the audience is ‘laughing at the joke”, as anyone that has been present for a few live tapings will tell you, the audience is constantly told about the importance of their laughter, so a large portion of them are forcing a laugh. Understandably so, being that they are watching the same joke (or close to it) for multiple takes. You know how easy it is to tell the average fake laugh? Now multiply that by 100 and its gonna sound kind of canned
“Whitney” is so bad it will only be around for a couple of weeks regardless of the laugh track.
> Not a laugh track. Studio audience.
We shot quite late, yet a lot of the audience was still there around 11PM. Really!
No… its Laugh Track
Remember all the audio you hear is a track. Yes an audiance is present and a recording is made of that. That laugh is recorded seperately and that track is then mixed in… laugh track. That is also mixed with other porfessional laughers, their are only a few who do this as a full time job and once you hear them do thier laugh seperatly on an interview you can hear those particular laughs. And the other points about editing are true too.
Bottom line it is used to guide a TV audience into what is funny. A good deal science goes into that track, when to put it in, how long the actors break for.
The biggest problem as it is right with whitney is the volume. The laugh track is too high. But honestly go and youtube some of the top 4 camera sitcoms right now with out the laugh track. The shows just dont stand on their own.