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America's Funniest Home Videos

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America's Funniest Home Videos
File:AFVtitlecard.jpg
Current AFV title card
Created byVin Di Bona
StarringTom Bergeron (2001-present)
John Fugelsang (1998-2001)
Daisy Fuentes (1998-2001)
Bob Saget (1989-1997)
Ernie Anderson (announcer; 1989-1995)
Gary Owens (announcer; 1995-1997)
Jess Harnell (announcer; 1998-present)
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons20
No. of episodes407
Production
Executive producerVin Di Bona
Running timeApprox. 60 minutes
Original release
NetworkABC (produced by Walt Disney Productions)
ReleaseNovember 26, 1989 (as a special)
January 14, 1990 (regular series) –
present
(renewed through 2009-2010 season)

America's Funniest Home Videos (often simply abbreviated to AFV, though it was previously AFHV) is an American reality television program on ABC in which viewers are able to send in humorous homemade videotapes. The most common videos usually feature slapstick physical comedy arising from accidents and mishaps. Other popular videos include humorous situations involving pets or children, while some are staged practical jokes and various forms of act. The show is based on the Japanese show Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan (aired on Tokyo Broadcasting System).

It was announced on April 23, 2009 that AFV had been renewed with its 20th season beginning October 4, 2009.[1]

For autumn 2008, AFV commands an average cost of $90,044 for a 30-second commercial, according to an Advertising Age survey of media-buying firms.[2]

Synopsis

Produced by Vin Di Bona, with co-executive producers Todd Thicke and Michele Nasraway,[3] it is currently the second longest-running entertainment program on ABC. It is based on the Tokyo Broadcasting System show Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan, which featured a segment in which viewers were invited to send in video clips from their home movies. The format has since been reproduced around the world, and AFHV-inspired TV specials and series continue to emerge periodically in the United States.

Many videos are range from a few to a couple of seconds and are mostly related to the host's monologues. Videos usually feature people and animals getting into humorous to dangerous accidents caught on camera. Other videos would have people staging acts specifically for the show by presenting their acts, which is based on the spin-off America's Funniest People.

Every week, three videos are chosen by the producers and voted on by the studio audience. The winner wins US$10,000, and is in the running for the $100,000 prize at the end of the season, while the runner-up receives $3,000, and third place banks $2,000. Very early in the show's run, the second and third prizes were a new TV and a new VCR, respectively. On the initial hour-long special, the grand prize was $5,000 with second and third places winning a new camcorder; the producer picked the winner, with no audience voting.

Beginning about the middle of the first season, the show featured the "Assignment America" segment; which called for a series of videos to be made pertaining to a specific theme. Also, Saget's era produced a memorable segment called "Freeze Frame" which was a montage of videos with the song "Freeze Frame" played by The J. Geils Band. The show was so successful in its first year that in 1990, it spawned a spin-off titled America's Funniest People; another short-lived spinoff was created in 1995 with World’s Funniest Videos.

Many of the clips have been used internationally in various comedy compilation programs, with changes such as dubbing and subtitling. The title of the show is usually changed and the studio segments are omitted.

According to the closing credits, most of the videos have been edited for length reasons. Some of the displayed dates on the videos are blurred, mostly due to date setting errors.

Ratings

AFV finished the 1989/1990 season as the most watched program on the US TV with an average of 38.0 million viewers [4] for each episode.

Season 20 US ratings

Order Episode Rating Share Rating/Share
(18-49) 		Viewers
(millions) 		Rank
(Timeslot) 		Rank
(Night)
1 "Episode 2001" 4.5 8[5] 2.2/6[6] 7.98 4 17
2 "Episode 2002" TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA
3 "Episode 2003" TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA

History

Bob Saget (1989–1997)

The show debuted on November 26, 1989 as an hour-long special,[7] produced by Vin Di Bona and Steve Paskay, and later as a weekly half-hour primetime series on January 14, 1990, with actor/comedian Bob Saget as host and Ernie Anderson as announcer. Once Anderson became too ill to continue, Gary Owens took over as announcer. Saget co-hosted the special with actress Kellie Martin, then the star of Life Goes On, which would be the lead-in show to AFHV in its early seasons. From the premiere of the show until the start of season 5, it aired Sunday nights at 8:00. Beginning in season 5, the show started Sunday primetime, airing at 7:00pm, followed by America's Funniest People at 7:30 as part of a videos hour. In Season 5, Bob Saget introduced an animated sidekick named "Stretchy McGillicuddy", who was known for trying to tease Bob and other crazy things. He was dropped at the end of Season 7.

Johnny Carson made both the show and Saget regular targets of his monologues on The Tonight Show. The jokes generally centered on something like a new title for the show, such as "Fluffy Falls into the Food Processor" hosted by Bob 'Where's My Career' Saget.

In 1994, ABC cancelled America's Funniest People and had to decide what to do with the Sunday night 7:30 slot now vacant. They expanded Saget to one hour, first showing that week's new episode for the first half-hour and then showing a repeat from a previous season to fill the remaining time. Usually if a $100,000 show was that week's new episode, a regular episode would be shown afterwards and vice versa but it wasn't uncommon if the new and rerun episodes were regular.

Saget soon grew tired of the repetitive format and was eager to pursue other projects as an actor and director[citation needed]. Producer Di Bona held him to his contract, resulting in a frustrated Saget listlessly going through the motions and making pointed remarks on the air during his last two seasons.[citation needed] His contract expired in 1997, and Saget left the show.

Saget has agreed to return to America's Funniest Home Videos for a 20th anniversary special edition of the series, which will air on ABC in November 2009, and tape in October 2009. Current host Tom Bergeron will co-host the episode with Saget.

Daisy Fuentes and John Fugelsang (1998–1999)

Bob Saget left the show after eight seasons in 1997, but the show returned on January 9, 1998, with new hosts, model Daisy Fuentes and stand-up comedian John Fugelsang, as well as a completely new look and feel. With the Sunday night 7:00 slot now occupied by Disney films, the show occupied constantly changing slots, from Monday nights to Thursday nights to Saturday nights. The ratings for the show suffered during this period, and in 1999 both hosts left the show after one season. This version was known for audio problems in the recordings.

After that one season, America's Funniest Home Videos returned occasionally as a series of specials hosted by various ABC sitcom stars, as well as ESPN's Stuart Scott, who did a sports version of the show that continues to be re-shown every New Year's Day.

Tom Bergeron (2001–present)

On July 20, 2001, the show returned again in its third format, this time with new host Tom Bergeron. The show was now being seen on Friday nights at 8:00; however, it went off the air for several months due in part to the September 11, 2001 attacks and in part to ABC airing specials and trying a new Friday night line-up. The new Friday night line-up was short lived, and the show returned in December 2001 or January 2002. In September of 2003, the show returned to the timeslot of Sunday nights at 7:00, still an hour long. Unlike Saget, who provided voiceovers to the clips, Bergeron humorously narrates them. The Bergeron version added new segments, such as "Tom's Home Movies," where his face is digitally superimposed over the faces on the videos, and the "slo-mo gizmo", where a video is played first at normal speed and then again at a slower speed and telestrated.

$100,000 contest

Near the end of each season, the $10,000 winners from selected episodes are brought back to participate in a contest called to win an additional $100,000.

Voting

  • Saget version: ABC stations (five in the first season, three from 1990 to 1993, and two from 1993 onward) around the country were joined via satellite to cast their votes along with the Los Angeles audience.
  • Fuentes/Fugelsang version (1998-2000): Only the Los Angeles audience voted.
  • Bergeron version (2001-present): Viewers log onto abc.com to cast their votes with the LA audience.

List of satellite cities on the $100,000 show

Three $100,000 contests air each season (one in the first season).

Other contests

  • 2002 "Battle of the Best": The Quad Squad ($25,000 and trip to Maui)[8]
  • 2006: Dancing Machine ($100,000 and free vacations to 500+ places for 48 years)
  • "Funniest Video of All-Time": The Quad Squad ($250,000)
  • 2009: Birthday Blowout ($100,000 and free vacations to 500+ places for 50 years)

Theme songs

The long-running theme was "The Funny Things You Do", performed by ABC's recording artist and ABC's in-house talent, Jill Colucci. At the time of AFHVs premiere, Colucci was in the midst of performing her vocals on the network's image campaigns, the last two years of the slogan Something's Happening (1988 and '89), and the first year only of America's Watching ABC (1990). Colucci herself occasionally made guest or cameo appearances when referred to by Saget, and even began singing the theme in person in one opening segment. "The Funny Things You Do" accompanied the opening and closing credits for eight seasons.

At the start of the 1996-97 season (the final year with Saget as host), the theme was revamped featuring new vocals, a boy and girl duet. The new version was also in a different key than the original. When AFHV returned in January 1998, with Fuentes & Fugelsang and a completely new look, the current arrangement of the theme song made its debut. Since that time, the theme has been an instrumental, composed by Dan Slider, with a faster, ska/reggae beat, with the original key (of the 1989 version) restored, making it sound similar to "The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

During the Saget era, the theme song also was tied in with a skit just before the transition was made from the introduction to Saget. This usually consisted of several actors in a fake room pretending to get excited watching America's Funniest Home Videos. This technique was scrapped at the end of Season 5. There was even one episode in Season 2 where Bob Saget was trapped in the room at the very beginning of the episode before Ernie Anderson announced his name and after trying to use a telephone to call for help he used a broken plastic spoon to cut through the fabric separating the "room" from the audience in order to leave it.

"The Funny Things You Do" was the theme song to the Australian version between 1991 and 2004. "The Funny Things You Do" was replaced by an intrumental version (not the song) as part of the 2005 major revamp.

Syndication

All episodes of AFV are currently in syndication, though all of the seasons of the series have never been syndicated together; instead, the Saget, Fugelsang-Fuentes, and Bergeron runs have each been syndicated separately. Repeats of the show aired on TBS from October 2, 1995-1998, USA Network from 1998-2001, and the Hallmark Channel from August 5, 2001-2003. Until 2001, the Saget version was syndicated by 20th Television, who assumed syndication rights from their purchase of MTM Enterprises, which had syndicated the show from 1995-1998.

Currently, Disney-ABC Domestic Television distributes all versions of the series. However, the 1989-1994 Bob Saget episodes are aired only in off-network syndication, including PAX TV (now Ion Television) every Monday through Thursday night (later Monday through Friday night) from 2003–2005, and Nick at Nite for a short time from April to October 2006. Also, when Nick at Nite began airing the early Saget episodes the first week the show aired, every $100,000 Grand Prize show was aired to commemorate the show joining Nick at Nite. Also when Nick at Nite aired the show, they replaced the old contest plugs done during the Saget era with the current contest plug in order for viewers not to see outdated contest plugs and if they were short on time, they also cut the Saget interviews with the winners.

The 1994–1997 Saget episodes aired on ABC Family from autumn of 2003 to 2007, usually on Monday through Saturday, and occasionally on Sunday nights if a movie was not shown. The Tom Bergeron episodes began airing on ABC Family on October 1, 2007, and are shown usually 5–6 nights a week, depending upon other ABC Family programming. Also, the Tom Bergeron episodes and the Daisy Fuentes/John Fugelsang episodes have all aired on WGN America, and still air to this very day, although WGN mostly shows the Tom Bergeron episodes, which air weekdays at 7PM, with a three-hour block shown on Monday nights. WGN America, however, does not air the 1994-1997 Saget episodes. Currently, PeachtreeTV has aired the entire Saget run since 2007. YTV (Canada) will also AFV on Saturday nights starting in September 2009. [9] The Tom Bergeron episodes of AFV began airing in off-network syndication starting on September 14, 2009.

Parody

The show has been subject of parody. It was mentioned in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "I Can't Watch This".

It was also the topic of a Rugrats episode. The show was entitled "America's Wackiest Home Movies", which was also the title of that particular episode from the Nickelodeon cartoon series. The first known winner was "Baby Mud Slinger", where the video consisted of a baby slinging mud and then falling over. Stu was disappointed in this. He and Drew attempted to create their own videos, only to become the "kids" themselves, as their father Lou entered a video of an accident in Stu and Drew's attempts. It wins the first prize.

In the animated comedy series South Park (Episode: Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut) Stan and Kyle send a video of Cartman to America's Stupidest Home Videos, an obvious parody of America's Funniest Home Videos.

On a couple episodes of The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest, the Bob Saget era of this show was parodied as "America's Dumbest Home Videos".

In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, a parody of America's Funniest Home Videos is mentioned several times as "America's Funniest Families".

"Pangea's Funniest Home Injuries", a parody of America's Funniest Home Videos, is mentioned in the Dinosaurs episode "The Family Challenge".

Taping locations

See also

References

  1. ^ "ABC gives early renewals to 12 shows". TV Squad. 2009-02-24. Retrieved 2009-08-09.
  2. ^ http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=131471
  3. ^ "America's Funnies Home Videos - About the Show..." Archived from the original on 2007-08-27. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  4. ^ http://www.audiencesusa.com/article-35909003.html
  5. ^ http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2009/10/tv-ratings-three-rivers-runs-with-older-viewers-sunday-nfl-wins-night.html
  6. ^ http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/10/05/tv-ratings-sunday-night-football-wins-three-rivers-runs-dry/29463
  7. ^ Moran, James M. (2002), There's No Place Like Home Video, University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0816638004
  8. ^ Levin, Josh (2006-08-24). "The agonizing journey from America's Funniest Home Videos to YouTube. - By Josh Levin - Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved 2009-08-09.
  9. ^ http://www.falltvpreview.com/channel.php?id=131
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