Honest question - have we reached a point where they won’t let “normal” people sit in the audience for some shows?
I think it's more a function of supply and demand -- there are a lot of television shows shooting in L.A. that use studio audiences and not nearly enough people who want to see all these shows.
While there are exceptions -- top-rated shows that have already been on for years and years -- most TV shows have at least some paid audience members. When I went to see a taping of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? a couple months ago, there was a short line of people who had volunteered to sit in the audience for no compensation because they just wanted to see the show and a longer line of paid audience members who were there to fill the remainder of the seats.
I'm unfamiliar with OS|LA Productions, but maybe they decided it would be easier to assume that everybody in the audience is going to be paid -- that way they wouldn't need to keep separate tabs on who's there for free and who needs to be checked off for compensation while the audience is leaving at the end of the day. When I wanted to sit in the audience for a
Pyramid pilot in 2010, it was actually a struggle to convince the audience company that I wanted to see the show voluntarily, as a fan.
Also, if the show tapes multiple episodes in a day, it's probably easier to wrangle one audience for the entire day rather than process a new group of audience members between tapings.
