The Drew Gooden channel is a live-streamed talk show where Drew Gooden, the host, discusses various topics, including his love for comedy and his experiment with sitcoms. He expresses his dislike for laugh tracks in sitcoms, arguing that they can create "dead space" in the show, reducing the amount of substantive content. He shares his initial experiment where he removed all non-dialogue segments from episodes of Friends, revealing that a significant portion of the episode was filled with laughter from the audience.
He then decides to expand his experiment, watching six different shows, including Parks and Recreation, Malcolm in the Middle, and The Big Bang Theory. He counts the number of jokes in each episode and compares the results between shows with and without laugh tracks. He notes that The Big Bang Theory, despite having a laugh track, has a higher number of jokes per minute compared to Schitt's Creek, a show without a laugh track.
Drew also discusses the changing landscape of television, noting the shift towards more narrative-focused shows like Barry and Young Sheldon, which have fewer laugh tracks. He concludes by praising shows that balance humor with emotional depth, like Parks and Recreation, and expresses his belief that laugh tracks are on the way out.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
- The text is a transcript of a video by Drew Gooden, a YouTube comedian, who made a video about laugh tracks in sitcoms.
- The video is a follow-up to a previous video he made called "Efficiency in Comedy", where he tested the theory that laugh tracks reduce the amount of jokes in a show by creating dead space.
- In the video, he watches six different shows, three with laugh tracks and three without, and counts the jokes per minute in each one.
- He uses random number generators to pick the episodes he watches, and he defines a joke as any choice made by the writers that was meant to elicit a laugh.
- He finds that the shows without laugh tracks have more jokes per minute on average than the shows with laugh tracks (5.7 vs 5.0).
- He also gives his opinions on each show and how they use humor, character development, and storytelling.
- He concludes that television has shifted away from the traditional sitcom format and that laugh tracks are becoming obsolete.
- He also promotes his sponsor Squarespace and his website pictureofhotdog.com, where he has a new feature that makes the hotdog look beautiful.