Laugh track, other sounds in radio commentaries

Gibirahan na ka, gi-biay-bi-ay pa gyud sa peke nga katawa (you’re already hit, you’re also mocked by fake laughter),” he said.

Many radio commentators nowadays use what the industry calls laugh track, which before was limited to comedy shows on radio and TV.

Charley Douglass who invented it applied the theory that it’s easier to laugh when you’re with people, as many radio listeners and TV watchers are alone or with only a few others in the room.

Doses of humor

But a laugh track in a public affairs show that’s supposed to be serious? That’s just it.

It’s not entirely serious, not all the time anyway, not when audiences want to be entertained even by a commentary program. The top-rated commentators usually give doses of humor along with broadsides on wayward public officials.

What bogus laughter supports is not exactly humorous. It’s often thinly veiled sarcasm or outright scorn of the public official whom the commentator flogs. The canned laughter strips any pretense of good manners or soft punches.

The laugh track seems to have become a weapon of choice, a security blanket of sorts.

When the commentator’s discourse flags, the laughter may stop the listener from dozing off; when the host is on an attack mode, the laughter cheers on the broadcaster, as if it would validate his points.

Wrong button

The commentator tends to be indiscriminate and licentious in pushing the laughter button. That may grate on listeners’ nerves, lead to embarrassing results or even invite litigation, such as:

[] when every sentence or paragraph is interrupted by laughter, which can irritate the listener;

[] laughter is supplied when what is said isn’t a bit funny or is even sad (one host said somebody died and -- this is true, I can swear on Judge Yrastorza’s Bible -- the news was followed by laughter);

[] when laughter accompanies a defamation or slander, which will help prove malice, an essential element of libel.

To prove malice

Next to a plunge in ratings, the broadcaster must find threatening a lawsuit that’s both expensive and timeconsuming.

No one yet though has used it as evidence in a libel litigation but it’s definitely easier, with the laugh track, for an aggrieved person to prove ill-will or spite of the commentator.

Few can be more eloquent proof of malice: acerbic comments accompanied by loud and sustained snicker. The judge may not accept a defense of having pushed the wrong button, especially when verbal assault and laughter were repeatedly done.

Other devices

There are radio opinion makers who shun canned laughter because they (a) rely on how they dish out their commentary and don’t need audio devices for help; or (b) find the “laugh-in” distracting, or (c) agree with that study which says listeners “find the same things funny and the same regions of the brain light up whether or not they hear others laughing.”

To each his own device. Some radio commentators and news anchors employ snatches of a song while they talk on a hot issue.

The line from “Ordinary Girl” -“From an ordinary house/on an ordinary road/ from an ordinary town...” was played as they disputed PNP chief Alan Purisima’s “not-a-mansion, not-avilla” claim about his house in Nueva Ecija. Or George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” when they analyzed bedroom antics of a philandering doctor. Or Asin’s “Magnanakaw” when they railed against thieves of pork barrel funds.