A method and system for providing a distributed audience response for a broadcast records a response from a participating client of a broadcast and transmits the response to an audience server. The audience server combines the response with responses from other participating clients of the broadcast, and the combined response is then transmitted to a receiving client for playback in synchronization with the broadcast. Intelligible speech can be removed from the combined response. The participating client can be part of a group of clients of the broadcast, where the responses from the group of clients are combined and played back. A participant can invite certain other participants to “sit next to” him or her, where the responses of the invitees are configured to be intelligible over the combined response.