bttt.Thanks, WinOne!
Now that this fun thread has been "demoted" out of "Breaking News," I guess that I'll have to get back to flogging it again, too!
From www.thrfeed.com:
March 05, 2010NBC denies adding laugh track for Sarah Palin
NBC is denying a report that "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" boosted apparent audience enthusiasm for Sarah Palin's appearance by using a laugh track.
A report from liberal site Daily Kos is getting plenty of pickup saying the response of the live audience to Palin's jokes was entirely unlike what NBC aired. Written by a member of the audience claiming to be a sound engineer, here's the relevant portion:
They added laughter where there was none during uncomfortable portions. Well, there was some laughter. Mine, of derision. During those pregnant pauses in her performance I was laughing long and loud, couldn't help myself as much of what she was saying was utterly surreal, ridiculous, hypocritical - nonsense, spewed platitudes, pushed buttons. I was seriously thinking of leaving as it was getting hysterically unfunny.Clearly the Daily Kos poster isn't a Palin fan (and would lose a spelling bee if given the word "responsibility").After sitting through the taping of the show in the studio I can recount many portions where there was little or no laughter or response, but at the later broadcast they are smoothed over with applause and laughter that WERE NOT THERE at the taping. Groans, hoots, grumbling, or just dead silence - all missing.
They should bear some responsibilty for hawking a defective product. This is corporate shilling in the worst way, not only to raise Leno's ratings, but to push Palin on a crowd with fake laughter and applause.
Asked about the audio track, NBC replied,
"Neither the audio nor the laughs were enhanced for Sarah Palin's segments on 'The Tonight Show.'"Hmm. If only the "NBC denied" list wasn't so long and fraught with strikethroughs and asterisk marks...
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[Here are some selected comments...]
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...I dunno. No Palin fan myself, but this guy obviously wanted to hate her performance so much, I wouldn't put too much stock in his recollection of what actually occurred.
Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.
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I question all of the laughs, mainly because the audience was DEAD during her SNL appearance back in '08 (the only laughs Palin got were when a very pregnant Amy Poehler started rapping... so those laughs belonged much more to Poehler).
Also, wasn't Adam Lambert on the show that night?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that many of the very fanatical Adam Lambert followers don't share a lot of overlap with the equally fanatical Sarah Palin followers.
The wording of NBC's response is curious, as well: "Neither the audio nor the laughs were enhanced for Sarah Palin's segments on 'The Tonight Show.'"
Why wasn't there a blanket statement just denying ANY use of audio/laugh enhancements for the show?
Singling out the Sarah Palin segments seems to imply that the show DOES, at times, enhance laughter.
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And why in the world would NBC want to make Palin look good?
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...It's nice to see another lie about Sarah Palin debunked (they always are) but the author of this deal just couldn't help themself at the end.
Man you lefties are scared of this little housewife from moose country! (As you should be)
Funny thing, Sarah was last on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and William Shatner.
She killed with her spoof on Shatner.
The audience went crazy for her...
Excuse me (0+ / 0-)
I never said anyone was lying. I suggested that the diarist's memories may be inaccurate and he may not have had a complete picture of what was going on around him. This happens to even the best-trained observers (and I have no reason to believe that the diarist is such).
No doubt, if you were listening for it, you might have heard groans, boos, sarcastic laughter, moments of silence -- and that might impress you as the most salient features of the soundscape.
But that doesn't mean they actually were.
Personal impressions, particularly when skewed by a strong emotional bias, are not a match for good old data.
Now, it seems to me quite possible and even likely that they mixed the sound so as to mute any boos or catcalls, and enhance any applause. That's credible and to some extent even defensible, from a commercial point of view -- I'm sure Leno doesn't want to add fuel to the impression that he and his show are deeply unpopular.
But the diarist is claiming that they went beyond that -- that they ripped out all the audience tracks and replaced them with canned laughter. And while that's certainly not unprecedented, or technologically unfeasible, it's a rather serious charge and I would want more evidence from it than a series of impressions. Did anybody ask the studio? Interview the sound technicians? Get any kind of statement at all?
In the absence of an effort to verify these impressions, such claims could backfire, if it turns out that the aired audio is in fact based on the studio tapes.
P.S.: As I've said before, I am in no way or sense "pro-Sarah". You need to take care of that knee-jerk reflex before you injure yourself with it.
Yes, the studio has been asked (1+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
- tommyfocus2003
Washington Post interviewed us both, plus more experts on audio. Watch for the story!
You bring up reasonable points, but I echo what Symbolman said - I was there - and I distinctly remember wondering why the Palin supporters weren't laughing at her jokes at certain places. She was uncomfortable, and I think the audience picked up on that and was nervous and uncomfortable, too.
I didn’t have time to view it earlier and wanted to come back to it.