When a tv show is taped in front of a live studio audience, is the audience told when to laugh, clap, and make a big deal over a certain scene?

Yes. Every time I have been in a show audience, there are people with signs to tell us what to do.

@YARNLADY Really? Which shows have you been part of the audience?

I can’t remember which ones, but I used to go to live shows about three or four times a year.

The reason they do this is the audience would just sit there and do nothing with the prompt.

Yeah, they warm you up before hand and tell you to go wild welcoming the host. Then at various points during the show, they raise “applause” signs. They urge you to be very welcoming and to generate energy for the show. It’s how they make a living.

I saw the David Letterman show once. I may have read about it, too, but that was a long time ago, so I don’t really remember.

I remember going to a game show when I was a kid. There were people in the front holding up signs that said: Cheer! Ooooo! Clap! Laugh! The made us practice! Even then, I thought it was stupid.

Try an experiment. Turn the sound down lower than usual go into another room and listen to the laugh track. If you hear laughing every 5 seconds or so you know you’re listening to a crap show.

Man I’ve always hated that, the only thing worse is canned laughter. Its just like theyre telling the viewers at home “you’re too retarded to figure out whats funny or not so we’ll letyou know when you should laugh”. To me hearing that in the bg can ruin a show for me.

“Happy Days is filmed in front of a live stoodio audience….......but they’re a miserable bunch of tossers, so we gotta force em to laugh!”

Spontaneity is not welcome on a show that lasts just so many minutes and every minute is programmed. Timing is of the utmost importance. You can’t laugh too long or too short or it’ll throw the timing off. And then there are the commercials. It’s the producers job to hold it all together.

when I was 16 my sister took me to NYC and we ended up in the audience of TRL,
we were told when to applaud, when to stand, when to silence etc.
I was sort of sad about it, not gonna lie. I always just assumed everybody was just super into it….thinking back I guess it makes sense. I was totally oblivious up until that point though

I heard they kick your ass real bad if you don’t do as the signs say.

I notice with the show, Mash, there isn’t a lot of laughter, maybe every 10 minutes or so. It’s not like other shows, like Everybody Loves Raymond, where there’s constant laughter at almost every line. I mean if they need to tell the audience when to laugh and clap, then what’s the point of filming in front of a live audience?

@AshlynM Live audience laughter sounds different from canned laughter. Maybe not by much, but enough. They can also juice it later, if necessary. But they like that live feel.

Also, people are social animals. We laugh as much or more by association then we do by actually thinking it’s funny. We yawn together. We cry together. We have evolved to empathize with each other, and laughter is no exception.

There is a meditation called laughter meditation. You start by making yourself laugh. You do various kinds of laughs. Ho ho hos. Tee hee hees, etc. Eventually, and in not too long, you start laughing uncontrollable. All you need to get is warmed up, and then all of a sudden, things become hysterically funny.

So it works. That’s why they do it. You just have to get people started, and then this sympathetic response thingy takes over. It works below your level of awareness. Of course, some people don’t respond, but most people will, and those that do, will keep coming back, and all they need is an audience of a certain size and they get to take that to the bank.

There you have it. The science of sitcoms. Aren’t you glad you asked? LOL!