Actually, according to interviews and stuff on the DVD set, they did film
portions of first season shows in front of an audience. They had a wall in
the set that they could take out and replace with seats for those scenes. I
believe as they went on, they stopped doing this and just put in the canned
laughter, before getting rid of it all together.

-Mike

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Jason Baker <tovarbaker@...>wrote:

>
>
>
> nothing frustrates me more than television writers or reviewers who
> apparently don't know much about television... there is no way Sports night
> was not filmed in front of a studio audience! it was canned laughter! I
> simply don't know how it would be possible to film a single camera comedy
> /drama in front of a live audience.
> back then there were no single camera 30 minute sitcoms (unlike today that
> is just about all there are) and I imagine that the execs at ABC didn't know
> how to handle a show like SP and decided to give it a laugh track... a very
> poor one at that. did you ever notice that the laughs all come at the wrong
> moments and with the wrong amount of ... how should I put it, Laugh
> inflection! it almost feels like it was made for a different television
> show.
>
> anyway aside from that. interesting article. I love revisiting Sports
> Night. I often put in the DVD while I am folding laundry... there's no
> better way to match socks
>
> Jason
>
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>
>
>


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