TVSquad

Will & Grace is.

Reply

I went to a Hope and Faith taping in NYC.

Reply

Check the website of the places that give away tickets to tapings... that'll give you an idea.

Reply

Will & Grace! Forgot about that! Four Kings probably tapes in front of a live audience, too.

And I also had a friend go to a Hope & Faith taping (it tapes in NYC to accommodate Kelly Ripa's schedule), and I completely forgot about it... that's how memorable that show is.

I'm guessing that new Julia Louis-Dreyfus show is filmed in front of an audience.

How 'bout "The War At Home"? Do they actually get people in the studio to laugh at that crap?

Reply

It's all irrelevant cause the laughter is "sweetened" so much in post-production that it's all pretty fake anyhow. Just look at the outtakes and deleted scenes on the "Seinfeld" box sets, there is very little live laughter going on. Most scenes are shot multiple times and the "joke" is gone after the first take. My guess is that there hasn't been an "honest" live audience track since the days of "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy".

Reply

There's been at least one "honest" live audience track since "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy," and that would be "All in the Family" -- at least during the show's early years.

The cast performed each episode twice, to two different audiences. After the first performance, jokes that didn't work were rewritten, and changes were incorporated into the second performance. The show that went on the air was a complicated edit of the two performances; one of the show's directors said that an average episode consisted of about 80 edits.

Of course, it was sort of "cheating" to use the "second chance" method, but the laughs in those early years (while the show was recorded at CBS Television City) were apparently the best laughs of two takes.

After the show moved to Metromedia Square a few years into its run, it was done the "How I Met Your Mother Way," with the finished version played to an audience to record their laughs. At that time, the credit voiceover was changed to "'All in the Family' was played to a studio audience for live responses."

Reply

Friends was.

Some scenes were filmed with a laugh track, particularly those featuring Ursula and Phoebe together.

Reply

Yeah Patrick, you're right about "All in the Family". To clarify, the move away from live audience tapings occured only in the series final season (after Mike and Gloria moved away), before it morphed into "Archie Bunker's Place".

"All in the Family" was able to do it because there were few scene or locale changes within an episode, and each segment (before and after the middle commercial) was usually done straight thru in real time. In fact, most of Norman Lear's 70's shows were done similarly. I can't think of any contemporary sitcom that could be done staight thru like that, perhaps "Cheers" was the last...

Reply

Two and a Half Men
Out of Practice
King of Queens
Joey
Courting Alex
Rodney
According to Jim
Yes, Dear
Still Standing
Less Than Perfect
Reba
Twins
What I like About You
Living With Fran
George Lopez
Freddie
Girlfriends
Eve
Cuts
Half and Half
That '70's Show
Stacked
All of us
One on One

Reply

Whoever is saying Games Shows are not filmed in front of a live audience is wrong, wrong, wrong. From the earliest days of TV nearly every Game Show has had a live audience -- in fact I cannot think of one that did not.
CBS's TV City Studio near the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles ran lines around the outside of their buildings for decades! Since some of those lines formed as early as 4 am it could get quite chilly for those standing out there for hours in the winter months.
I only did the line thing once for "The Price Is Right" back in 1982. One of the show's producers interviews and reviews the audience as it files inside -- he or she are looking for possible contestants. It is hard to say just what they are looking for but if you do not light up when the camera and attention are on you then you are not likely to make it up on stage.
These days there are really only a half a dozen game shows left on the air, but there were almost 20 every week in the 60s.
Game shows for whcih tickets are available: Wheel of Fortune -- travels to several major US cities each season, and always spends one week in Hawaii; Jeopardy- LA; The Price is Right -- CBS/Los Angeles; Who wants to be a Millionaire -- filmed in NYC(?); any others still on the air?

Reply

Speaking of live audiences and laugh tracks: I recently caught David Spade's Showbiz Show on Comedy Central. While there is an audience, the show is heavily sweetened with a laugh track. And it sounds like they're using tracks from a 70's sitcom. Rather pathetic.

Reply

Thirty-five years ago or so, many game shows were still taped in NYC, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. (NBC)
At 9:00 AM weekdays any tickets remaining for that days tapings were given out on a first come first served basis. You could also get standby tickets for the Tonight Show which was also still in NYC.

As a high-school student, this was the best place in NYC to cut school. Free tickets to game shows, like the original Jeopardy with Art Fleming, Match Game with Gene Rayburn and Concentration with Hugh Downs. Plus many other shows including an AM talk show with Joan Rivers. You only had to worry about the camera shooting the audience (very rare) so your mother did not see you weeks later when the show was telecast.
Most importantly was the oath of secrecy. If you discovered the handing out of tickets you could not spread the word and increase the competition from other school cutting kids.
Free, entertaining, warm and dry; and if you were really lucky Johnny Olsen would give you a dollar during the audience warm-up.

Reply

We are wondering if the house used for Yes, Dear is the same house that was used to film Beverly Hills 90210? We have looked everywhere but cannot find a picture of the Yes, Dear house.

Reply

who has starred or co-starred in the most t.v. shows.
i have tried to find this answer for years. please help

Reply

Just a quick question...What was the first tv sho filmed before a live studio audience?

Reply

Just caught some of the CW's "Girlfriends" and found it pretty pathetic. It was clearly a show filmed on location and in studios without an audience, but it had this cheesy, out-of-place laugh track.

I mean, there's just NO WAY most of that show is shot in front of an audience, yet there they are, laughing when they're supposed to. It reminded me of "Scooby Doo" and "The Flintstones" having a laugh track- Impossible to be in front of a live audience!!!

Reply

Something many people don't know about Studio Audiences: While tickets are free, to make sure that the audience is always full (usually 200 to 250 people) the shows will hire "laughers". This is especially true of new shows and older shows that aren't as popular. This also insures that at least some people will stay for the whole taping which can run 5 to 6 hours.
I worked as a laugher on an episode of "George Lopez" last season, there were just 50 of us but the show had special make-up and stunts so it took 10 hours to film.
I also worked as an audience member for "Deal or No Deal" that took 12 hours. We stopped and started and did countless retakes and when Howie and the contestants were finished the audience stayed to get reaction shots from every angle. If I wasn't getting paid I would not have stayed.
The Price is Right and the late night talk shows all tape pretty much real time, meaning they don't stop, just pause for the commercials that are inserted, and the tapings are done in about an hour. You do have to wait in line for TPIR for about 8 hours though.

Reply

is the show reba still made and if it is, is it made in front of a live audience?

Reply