Growing up, every sitcom I watched had a laugh track. In fact, I think most of them had the same laugh track. My wife was watching a show and left the tv on. What followed was a new show I’d never seen before. The humour was bad, and the laugh track made it even more painful. I think the last sitcom to use a laugh track that actually didn’t take away from the comedy was The Big Bang Theory. But even there, I think they could totally have pulled it off without one.

Then came the commercials. Wow, they are awful. I really don’t watch a lot of TV, and when I do, it’s usually Netflix or some other streaming service that I don’t have to watch commercials on. Is there some sort of strategy whereby really bad commercials somehow work better than good ones?

Bad laugh tracks, bad commercials, bad sitcoms. How is TV going to survive in the next 5 years? Streaming services will be the way everyone watches their shows. I think most TV stations are going to go the way of the laugh track… and it won’t be a funny thing for them.

On the other hand, the old sitcoms I used to watch, like Friends, Seinfeld, and Cheers, are now the shows that my daughters are watching, or have watched. What’s funny about that is that I missed a lot of the shows because I didn’t see them on the night they played, and didn’t catch all the re-runs, but my kids watch episode by episode on demand. And that’s the difference now, shows can be watched any time, and without commercials.

The laugh track will live on in re-runs, but I think the days of the laugh track are long gone, and any good quality comedies of the future will rely on good humour and not a fake audience to cue the laughter of the viewer.