It's the TV-industry equivalent of viagra. A couple of hits ofit can make even the weakest specimen more potent, and — thethinking goes — leave unsuspecting entertainment seekers like youpositively limp with merriment. That's right, we're talkingabout the laugh track. And, according to some, it's not just thenetworks that are addicted to it. ''People watching TV are soconditioned to hearing laughs that when shows are tested withoutthem, they don't do well,'' saysThe Drew Carey Show executiveproducer Bruce Helford. ''American audiences need a laugh trackto be told it's okay to laugh out loud.''

There are those who beg to differ — who believe the generalpublic is smart enough to discern humor without any artificialprompting. Radical, yes, but clinical evidence does exist!Believe it or not, fans of laugh-track-free shows likeTheSimpsons,The Larry Sanders Show,Dream On, TheWonder Years,and that so-called comedyAlly McBeal will vouch for spontaneousbursts of uncued snickering.

ABC, alas, chose not to believe, and that decision led to somefireworks over one of its new fall entries,Sports Night — acomedy about an ESPNSportsCenter-like show. Imagine Televisionand Disney's Touchstone Television, producers of the sitcom,wanted to film the show without a live audience or laugh track,which go hand in hand (tracks are used in postproduction tosmooth out or enhance live laughs;M*A*S*H is a very rareexample of a sitcom that used a track only). Given a choice,network suits insisted it be shot with an audience. ABC's seniorVP of comedy programming, Carolyn Ginsburg Carlson, admits therewere ''emotional and difficult'' arguments on both sides, but ABCwon out. While Ginsburg Carlson and ABC appreciated theproducers' concerns about making ''the show feel forced,'' theyultimately felt the laugh track was valid: ''If done right,'' shesays, ''it can be wonderful.''

Sports Night exec producer Aaron Sorkin, now resigned to ABC'sultimatum, explains his original reservations: ''Once you doshoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to usethe laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the rightthing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times,it alienates me.''

Probably because it's nearly always a cymbal crash, with cannedlaughs boosting fresh ones to fever pitch. Remember the scene inAnnie Hall where Tony Roberts' character asks his sound engineerfor a ''medium-size chuckle'' after a particularly bad joke? Doesa medium-size chuckle even exist anymore? ''Laugh tracks havebecome much more obtrusive,'' concedes Tony Jonas, president ofWarner Bros. Television. But, he adds, ''the TV industry has madea science of this...it'll be around for a long time.''

Nevertheless, detractors are becoming more vocal. ''It's morallywrong,'' says Everybody Loves Raymond exec producer PhilipRosenthal. Laugh tracks ''are overused, and it makes the TVviewer look like they don't have a brain in their head.''Rosenthal's solution is to use them sparingly: ''The majority ofthe time [on Raymond], the laughs viewers hear come from thelive audience; tracks are only used for 'pickups,''' occasionalscenes reshot after the audience has left.