Canned Applause on SNL?

A strange thing happened this weekend on 'Saturday Night Live.' As host Hugh
Laurie began his opening monologue -- and after the applause from his
introduction had died down -- a second, quieter track of seemingly canned
cheers and applause continued as Laurie spoke, only to abruptly fade out
several seconds later.

Listen for yourself, in this clip recorded from the live east coast
broadcast of the show:

Yes, it's subtle. And yes, like you, my first instinct was to write it off
as simply a clumsy audio mix of the actual live audience. But if you listen
to it carefully, there's something about the timing and ferocity of those
last four or five seconds of applause that just seems off. To boot, knowing
personally the size of the SNL's Studio 8H in NYC, I can tell you for a fact
that if the crowd is cheering, there's no way to fade out from that to total
silence.

And while it's not unusual for pre-recorded television shows to "sweeten"
the applause or laughter recorded from a live studio audience, it would seem
a most disingenuous move for 'SNL.' In fact, in distancing himself from the
Ashlee Simpson lip-syncing incident two years ago, 'SNL' creator Lorne
Michaels told '60 Minutes' that had he known she'd planned to lip sync, he
would have said stopped her, saying that pre-recorded audio goes against the
show's essence of being live.

So is 'SNL' sweetening its live audio? And if so, can we assume this
includes laughter, in addition to applause?

janospetrik...

It's like Oprah Winfrey"s "Whoo" track. I noticed that the loudest
"whoos" come when the cameras are trained on the rear of the audience,
and most of the audience members aren't even applauding. The
screeching women in the audience look bored even when taped head-on,
(unless they're promised some free stuff).

Oprah is a multi-millionaire, can't she be satisfied with what she has
and not degenerate into another TV phony?

newsgroupjen...

"Millionaire? With an "M?" That's adorable." (Tina Fey SNL News
reference),