How To Bring Laughter Back To Late Night

Late night talk show hosts are making their way out of their homes and back to the studio. This means that their shows are starting to get back to some version of a new normal. Conan O’Brien has been broadcasting from Largo. Jimmy Fallon is back at 30 Rock in studio 6A, across the hall from his regular studio. Stephen Colbert said that he was not going to be broadcasting from his home before going on a two-week hiatus. 

Great! TV is starting to look like it should have looked for weeks, if not months. High quality broadcast cameras, good sets and backgrounds, small crews… much better for the viewing experience. 

But what about the listening experience? There won’t be in-person audiences for many months. It’s been awkward watching comedians push through their shows without audience reactions. SNL tried (and failed) to incorporate laughter during Weekend Update. Some have done better than others - but none of the shows feel quite right.

Presenting… LiveLaugh! A socially distanced audience that can add laughter and applause back to any show.

How does it work?

It’s not terribly complicated. A TV show either streams or uploads their episode to LiveLaugh. Then, between 20 and 1000 paid or volunteer “audience members” will watch a synced version of the show using headphones, and they will laugh, clap and react along with the show into their headphone’s microphone. These individual synced audio tracks will be transmitted to the cloud, where they will be mixed down to a single laugh track combining everyone’s laughter. That track will either be sent live to an audio mixer during a live show so the host can engage with the laughter, or will be added as a simple audio file in post. 

This is not your typical canned laugh track. It is a 100% custom recording that replicates the sound, pacing, and energy of an in-person studio audience. The recording quality of headphone microphones is good enough that when dozens or hundreds of these audio tracks are mixed together correctly, it sounds just like a studio audience. 

What about the few people that don’t sound good enough or people that have a “special laugh”? Artificial Intelligence (OK, it’s machine learning, but AI is what all these services pretend to have) will help cut out the bad tracks. There will also be an option to manually remove bad tracks. 

You can take it to the next level by adding a warm-up comic, and by selecting your audience from a marketplace. You could choose a group by age, gender and ethnicity. If you start choosing these “professional laughers”, they can be provided with a higher quality microphone and get paid to react to shows all day.

So, why didn’t I just make this already?

I can’t program. I don’t know how to do it. I need to find someone to partner with me to create it. If that’s you, let me know. Or, just steal my idea, and I’ll have a slight grudge against you for the rest of your life, and it’ll be awkward when you run into me at the grocery store. 

Why should your show use LiveLaugh?

It’s terribly uncomfortable to watch comedians and performers present without an audience reaction. While YouTube, Twitch and TikTok comedians have thrived without an in-person audience, most TV hosts lack that skill. If the audience is enjoying the video and audio experience, they’re more likely to stick around and watch longer, and watch through more commercial breaks, and stay engaged with the show.

Even after post-COVID reopening, there may be value in a service like LiveLaugh. Audiences are expensive. Even though most of them aren’t paid, they have to be herded in and out of the stage by an Audience team, there are multiple audience coordinators, sometimes they have to be fed, and they just take up a lot of space. An audience can take up 50% of expensive soundstage real estate. They need to be kept busy when production isn’t active. They need to go through security. It’s just a lot.

I’m not suggesting that live in-person audiences should be completely eliminated. Nothing beats the experience of live laughter for a performer. But for shows that can’t accommodate the complications of a live audience, or for smaller shows that wouldn’t have considered it before, LiveLaugh can ease the pain.

What’s the business model? 

This is a Software as a Service (SaaS). Individual shows or networks can licence LiveLaugh. They’d have to acquire their own audiences via their existing mailing lists and social media accounts. They could pay LiveLaugh per minute, per clip, or per full show.

There could also be an Audience Marketplace where potential audience members sign up and shows then select from that pool. The shows would pay LiveLaugh for this service, and if desired, some of that money could go to the actual audience members. 

Another option would be that an existing live audience service like 1iota could licence LiveLaugh, and they would then use their existing audience network and audience finding tools to provide the best audiences for shows. Many talk shows use 1iota, so this would be a smooth transition.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of shows that are currently airing without laughter. If even a small percentage of them used LiveLaugh, it would be profitable.

What does it cost to run?

LiveLaugh has a lot of the traditional costs of a SaaS product. Server storage, bandwidth, web/app development and maintenance, and customer service costs are the main costs. Audience acquisition may also be required - likely by buying mailing lists, and leveraging paid social ads. 

Who can use LiveLaugh?

Late night talk shows are the target audience, but it’s not limited to them. Any show with an audience can use LiveLaugh. Daytime talkers, sporting events, WWE, sketch shows, radio shows, podcasts, stand-up shows, reality shows like America’s Got Talent… anything that needs an audience and won’t have one for a while can use LiveLaugh to bring the audience back! 

Some of these shows are already trying similar things - though not as custom, and not without issues. MLB has added crowd sounds powered by their video game engine. Some talk shows are adding minimal staff to their audiences. But nothing is going to replace custom audiences like LiveLaugh.

The End! 

Seriously - if you want to work on this with me, send me a LinkedIn request. If someone else is working on this already and I missed it, sorry I guess? Bye!