I hate laugh tracks. I am not a television watcher. If I am home alone, it never gets turned on. If hubby is home, it is background noise even if he is reading, on his computer, or his smartphone. If it is on and I am in the same room, I either have on headphones listening to pod casts or music, or I am knitting, spinning, or weaving not paying much attention to it.
For the past several years, I have noticed a hearing difficulty in noisy environments and in October, it was confirmed as fairly significant hearing loss in my right ear, slight loss at high frequencies in my left. The loss in my right ear was significant enough that we took the major budget hit to get me a single hearing aid. It has helped considerably though it is still not set to full functioning, that will occur Monday morning, but one difficulty I have noted is directionality of sound. I guess if we had been willing to fork up twice as much budget money, I would have more directional microphones, but I have what I have.
Our house is a log home with heavy timber roofing system, so if I stand in the living room, the main support beam is way up in the air, well more than 20 feet. Behind the living room is an open kitchen and dining area, but it has an 8 foot ceiling and above that ceiling is the loft. The loft is our “den,” our sitting area where my craft tools are, where hubby’s flat screen TV is mounted, and where our comfy chairs are.
Often when I am in the kitchen, below the loft and he is in the loft with the TV on, I hear the voice sounds, often not distinguishable as conversation, but the annoying laugh track comes through clearly. Some shows vary the track a little, others such as some older sitcom reruns use the same excessive, repetitive track until I want to run screaming from the house. If I am in the room with the TV, and a line is spoken that is funny, I will laugh, often a line is spoken that lacks any level of humor and the laugh track is played. I don’t need to be cued to laugh when something is funny, nor will I laugh just because of their cue if it is not. Fortunately, movies don’t have laugh tracks.
