10 TV Shows Made With INSANE Restrictions
6. The Mandatory Laugh Track - Sports Night
Aaron Sorkin's predecessor to The West Wing, Sports Night, dramatised a fictional sports news show of the same name, and quite ironically revolved around a crew trying to produce a quality program while the network was constantly breathing down their neck.
During development, Sorkin and network ABC came to blows over one major issue - whether or not to include a laugh track.
Sorkin was firmly against it, but the network insisted, resulting in Sorkin's famously snappy, rat-a-tat dialogue having to make constant awkward pauses for the piped-in laughter.
It's completely bizarre to observe when rewatching the show today, though ABC at least saw sense enough to progressively phase the laugh track out later in the season, before abandoning it entirely for season two.
All the same, to force one of TV's greatest writers to pare down his signature style and leave breaks for fake audience laughter was... a choice.