Laughter.

        Six new sitcoms will air without “laugh tracks” — the recorded guffaws that have accompanied most TV sitcoms since the 1950s — as networks scramble to revive the 50-year-old half-hour comedy format.

        “The laugh track feels a little dated at this point. I think we're all conscious of that,” says NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker.

        Scrubs, a hospital comedy about young doctors, is NBC's only new sitcom without canned laughter. All three new Fox sitcoms — The Tick, Undeclared and the Bernie Mac Show — come without laughter, as does WB's Maybe It's Me and CBS' Danny, starring Daniel Stern.

        The six have something else in common: They're filmed without a studio audience, like Fox's Malcolm in the Middle, HBO's Sex and the City and ABC's The Job, Denis Leary's police comedy.

        Ten other new fall comedies — and most returning sitcoms — are taped in front of a studio audience by three or four cameras, a format dating back to Lucille Ball's I Love Lucy in 1951.

        “I've just gotten so bored with three-camera sitcoms ... (and) that canned laughter,” says Suzanne Martin, creator of WB's Maybe It's Me.

        Ms. Martin, a two-time Emmy winner for Frasier, uses voice-overs, Real World-style on-screen labels and VH1-like “pop-up video” text on the WB sitcom about a 15-year-old girl embarrassed by her weird parents (Julia Sweeney, Fred Willard) and obnoxious brothers and sisters.

        A laugh track on Bernie Mac, starring the “Kings of Comedy” tour comic, “would be very obtrusive,” says creator Larry Wilmore (In Living Color, The PJs).

        In the semi-autobiographical show, Mr. Mac plays a married comedian who takes in his sister's three children (ages 5, 8, 13) when she goes into drug rehab. Real World-type notations identify people and things in the pilot. The comedian also comments directly to the TV audience about his frustrations, like a contestant on Survivor.

        “I wanted to do a different type of show. I was just a little tired with the sitcom form,” Mr. Wilmore says. “Rather than rejecting reality shows, I thought, I'm going to embrace reality shows.”
       

Recent experiments

        In recent years, networks have experimented with various comedy forms — improvisation (Who's Line Is It Anyway?), broad satires (Homeboys in Outer Space), TV parodies (Grosse Point), sketches (Hype), animation (Family Guy) claymation (The PJs) and one-hour programs (Ally McBeal).

        But network executives have been reluctant to stop the laughter on tape. Seinfeld, shot with a studio audience, and M*A*S*H, filmed without an audience, had laugh tracks. The Wonder Years didn't have one, but Sports Night did when it debuted in 1998 — until producers Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme convinced ABC to go without it.

        Laugh tracks “stimulates and triggers my own laughter,” says Jamie Kellner, the Turner Broadcasting chairman and CEO who oversees WB, TNT, TBS and other AOL Time Warner channels.

        Recorded laugher “allows us to think that we're not in a room alone, but in a room with a bunch of other people, which is a very comfortable feeling,” Mr. Kellner says.

        WB programmers insisted on laugh tracks for Bob Saget's Raising Dad and Bill Bellamy's Men, Women & Dogs sitcom. Rob Long, the former Cheers writer who co-created Men, Women & Dogs, is unenthusiastic about WB's demand.

        “I'm not sure whether it needs it or not,” he says. “It's something the network feels strongly about.”
       

Groundbreaking series

        Bill Lawrence, the former Spin City producer who created Scrubs, and Ms. Martin credit the success of Fox's Malcolm in the Middle with changing network minds about filmed comedies. Veteran sitcom producer Jay Daniel (Roseanne, Cybill) also cites HBO's Larry Sanders Show and Sex and the City.

        “Until Malcolm, when you tried to pitch a single-camera comedy without a laugh track to a network, the big fear was that it ultimately wouldn't be funny,” Mr. Lawrence says.

        His Scrubs, based on the exploits of his best friend, a Los Angeles cardiologist, also uses fantasy sequences, sound effects and a voice-over narration by medical intern J.D. Dorian (star Zach Braff).

        “One of the reasons we're doing all of these fantasy things and visuals is to make it clear that, first and foremost, it's a comedy,” says Mr. Lawrence, who also has written for Friends and The Nanny. “It works well in other shows, and it always cracks me up, so we're going to stick with it.”
       

Fox leading the way

        It's no accident that the new Fox shows don't have laugh tracks. Before being named Fox Entertainment president in January, Gail Berman was president of the studio that produced Malcolm.

        In addition to Bernie Mac, Fox has Undeclared, a half-hour college dormitory comedy, and The Tick, a live-action show about the big blue superhero (Patrick Warburton, “Puddy” from Seinfeld,and his crime-fighting pals.

        “Our comedies ... are extremely creative,” Ms. Berman says. “I think they're taking the form and turning it on its head. But that's our obligation — to do that again and again and again.”

        Since WB and UPN launched in 1995, many in the TV industry have expressed their concerns about the comedy-writing pool being spread too thin over broadcast and cable networks, and the overused three-camera format devised by Desi Arnaz for Lucy.

        “We've seen too many living room-bedroom sitcoms on TV. I get really bored,” says Bruce Helford, executive producer of Drew Carey and Nikki.

        “In the post-Seinfeld age, everyone is very conditioned to flip the channel when they see that old (sitcom) format,” Mr. Lawrence says.

        At NBC, half of the four midseason sitcoms will be filmed without a studio audience. Mr. Zucker wouldn't say how many would have laugh tracks.

        “The bottom line is: Scrubs is funny,” Mr. Zucker says. “We're looking for funny, whether it has a laugh track or doesn't have a laugh track.”

        Contact John Kiesewetter by phone: 768-8519; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.
       

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