The Family Feud Story

Family Feud is a fixture of my life. It's the first game show I ever remember watching – one of my earliest memories is watching the Richard Karn version on my grandmother's CRT television, probably around 2006. As a kid, I'm sure the flashy graphics, big smiles, and constant sound effects were more captivating than anything. But for some reason, I kept coming back to it, and I kept learning more about it, all throughout my youth. I hunted down every iteration of the show online. I learned how to use emulators so that I could play all the video game adaptations. I made my own PowerPoint adaptations and forced my family to play them. I even made my first YouTube video, back in 2016, about the Ludia video game adaptation Family Feud Decades. (That video was not very good.)

All of which is to say that these videos are the product of a lifetime of interest in the history of this show. I couldn't explain it if you asked. I guess we all have our things.

This project was actually first conceived as an assembly of every international version of Family Feud. My plan was to go nation by nation, showing what each adaptation looked and sounded like, how they all toyed with the format, that sort of thing. There are some very wacky adaptations of this show. I hope to revisit the project someday.

The Dawson Years (1976-1985)

Notes:

• I was feeling adventurous with this project and, partly inspired by the style of this Tom Scott video, decided to show my face. I'm glad you all got to see my beautiful mug, but I ended up not really liking the result. It just gives the video a different energy, and though I don't think it's awful or anything, I don't think it added much. It also made the editing way harder, so I decided to drop it going forward.

• Someone pointed out in a comment that the Match Game Star Wheel landed on Dawson the first time it was used, prompting some of the panelists to walk off the set. I actually thought about mentioning that in the main video, but it got cut from the script. 

• I got an interesting comment disagreeing with my statement that the "human element" of Family Feud was more important than the game itself. In retrospect, I didn't do a great job fully explaining what I meant. My main point was that Feud's singular "human element" set it apart from contemporary game shows, and that the unique format of the game was critical in allowing that element to flourish. I wasn't trying to take away from the fact that Family Feud is still, first and foremost, a game show. The strength of the game was what kept it afloat during its less successful years – the human element combined with that strength to make the show thrive.

• A lot of (presumably older) people have left comments calling me "soft" or "woke" for my words about Dawson's kissing. Now, I really don't care what these people think. But I do want to clarify that I never necessarily said that the kissing was wrong or predatory. I just said it didn't age well, and it didn't. Just like countless other things from the annals of television. You can have your own opinions about its merits — I have mine — but my stance in this video is merely that it plays differently today than it did in its time. 

Corrections:

• At 10:27, I say that Family Feud went to ABC due to the fact that Fred Silverman, formerly of Match Game's home network, CBS, worked there by 1975. I later learned that was not the significant factor I thought it was -- luckily, I was able to clear this up in the proceeding video (around the 7:10 mark).

• Commenter GrandGame1440 pointed out to me that my claim that Dawson's flaking on his Tonight Show guest hosting spot landed him on a blacklist for the rest of Johnny Carson's tenure was actually mistaken. Though Dawson never guest hosted the show again, he did return as a guest — including his appearance in the very clip I use in this video! It's obvious in retrospect that those dates don't line up; I just didn't catch it while making the main video, and my source that claimed Dawson was completely blacklisted was apparently mistaken.

• Commenter ajk unearthed this clip of Dawson hosting the Tonight Show in 1979. He's interviewing — of all people — William Shatner.

• Around 30:01, I call Cathy Hughart-Dawson "inexperienced in everything except saying 'yes' to Richard Dawson." That's not a fair statement. Cathy had worked on the show for many years by that point, and even though she may have been younger and more deferent to Dawson than the outgoing Howard Felsher, it's not fair to characterize her as some random nepotistic addition to the staff.

  • • It is fair to say, though, that the family connection helped her get the promotion.

• I was unclear in my description of the 400-point format change at the end of the show's run. Part of the reason that the show was padded so heavily with game was that, in addition to the increase of the winning score, the game added another single-value round (bringing the number to four) before the usual double- and triple-value rounds.

• Bob Boden confirmed for me something I had been unable to get closure on in original research for the video: Dawson's final monologue, prominently featured near the end of the video, did not actually air upon the original broadcast. 

The Ray Combs Revival (1988-1995)

Notes: 

• Paige Shaw pointed out to me that Ray Combs had actually auditioned for the job of hosting the 1987 version of Classic Concentration before coming aboard Family Feud, which I thought was a neat little piece of information. That job ultimately went to Alex Trebek. 

  • • I actually didn't believe this at first, but sure enough, it seems to be true.

• I also found out a little more information about Ray Combs's comedy clubs -- and the disasters they were -- at this blog post. I was too far along in the process when I discovered it to add it in, but I think it's an interesting addition to the tragic story.

• I have seen a number of people in the comments running with the idea that Jonathan Goodson was, in some way, directly responsible for Ray's death. I reject this. I honestly have a lot of sympathy for a man who seems to have been doing his best to lead a company he was thrust in charge of. The loss of the Feud job was just one component of an avalanche of sorrow in Ray's life, so while it's one thing to claim that Jonathan mishandled the transition or made a poor judgement call (which I don't necessarily disagree with), it's another to claim that he bears responsibility for the tragedy in Ray's life that unfolded thereafter. 

• When referring to TV ratings, I usually verbalize the decimal point (i.e. I call a 5.6 a "five point six"). In the business, I've learned, it's more common to not do that (a 5.6 is a "five six"). Not that it makes any difference, or that anyone really cares, but worth mentioning here.

• This video also got featured on the blog for a Chrome extension I use to capture web pages and articles. It was a very nice post and the author was very kind to feature my channel. I really do love GoFullPage, and it is one of only five Chrome extensions I keep pinned to my toolbar.

Corrections:

• So far, the only thing I've come across is that Joe Namath might have been removed from consideration over a monetary dispute, as outlined in this forum thread (which, in turn, references Joe Namath's biography, which I do not own).

• Also, according to Goodson staffer Beverly Pomerantz, Dick Clark also auditioned to host this version of Feud.

The Road to Steve Harvey (1999-2022)

Announcement upon release:

It's finally out!  The Story of Family Feud closes with a 68-minute retrospective on the current version of Family Feud, from its early development dating back to 1996, to its 1999 debut with Louie Anderson, to its 2002 refresh with Richard Karn, to its ratings struggles under John O'Hurley, to the present dominance the show enjoys with Steve Harvey at the helm.

Featured in the video is a firsthand perspective from Bob Boden, supervising producer of Family Feud during the 1999 debut season.  He agreed to an interview that we recorded on January 17, 2022, and he provides a fascinating glimpse into the process of the show's initial development, as well as some thoughts about the present state of the show.  Also featured is some never-before-publicized information about a failed cable spin-off of Family Feud, generously provided by a Fremantle executive who asked to remain anonymous.

This video took awhile.  Way longer than I was expecting.  I had no idea that this video would be the longest of the series.  The whole project (all three parts) comprised 1,266 files totaling over 230 GB of data.  The final draft of this video's script was a little over 12,000 words, bringing the grand total over the entire project to about 26,000 words.  The show's Wikipedia page has less than 6,000 words.

This project would not have been possible without the archival work of countless kind souls online.  If the source media wasn't available online, I would have nothing to base this story on.  My particular thanks goes out to the kind souls behind worldradiohistory.com, whose archives of industry publications were a phenomenal resource.  To everyone who has ever digitized old tapes and made these old TV shows freely available, you have my sincere thanks.  These projects would not be possible without you.

I'm so glad that this project is complete, and that the full story of Family Feud is more accessible now than it has ever been.  If you enjoyed the video, you can help me out by sharing it around with communities and groups that may appreciate it.  Youtube's algorithms haven't shown this video much love, and everyone loves deep-dive retrospectives on popular TV shows these days, right?

Notes:

• Many people took issue with the very first sentence of this video: "When you think about Family Feud, you think about Steve Harvey." I stand by it.

• This video originally had an entirely different intro! I edited it before I decided to replace it, so I figured I might as well share it with you guys as a little side fascination.

• A few people have mentioned that the 2006 CBS series Gameshow Marathon wrapped with a game of Family Feud played on a recreation of the original Dawson set, with Ricki Lake as host. I was aware of this, and I decided not to mention it. I just didn't think it was particularly relevant to the overall story of this show.

• Of course, as I've said many times, and will say again, I am extremely appreciative of Bob Boden's willingness to contribute his time and his perspective to this project. The sections of the video that feature him wound up my favorites. (And who knew that the original buzzer podium had been preserved?!)

• I intentionally never said who my favorite Family Feud host is, or who was "the best." Steve Harvey is the most relevant and successful today, sure, but I felt it would be a step too far to make that kind of personal-opinion declaration in a mostly-factual video. And I'm not even sure I have a concrete answer.

• There are many who believe that the most recent seasons' overtly sexual themes are too heavy-handed. I think they have a good point. But I would encourage anyone who uses this to dismiss Steve Harvey's tenure altogether to revisit some of his earlier seasons to better understand my commentary. 

• Looking back, I do think the last ~20 minutes of this video could have been tightened considerably with more script revisions. This video probably didn't need to exceed an hour. 

  • • "If I had had more time, I would have written a shorter letter..."

• I found this clip a week after upload.

Redactions:

• A few days after upload, a very annoying copyright issue briefly took the video down and forced me to cut out about 30 seconds to reinstate it. Luckily, I don't think it's a critical part of the video, and I'd actually be a little surprised if anyone could pick out where the jump is. But the video is slightly shorter than it was for the first 48 hours of its existence online.

• I already had to make changes to dodge copyright issues. The reason the clip from Louie's 1999 debut is in a small little TV is because that was the only way I could find for the clip not to trip the copyright sensor. The clip of Joey Fatone introducing Steve in his debut episode was also originally much longer.

• I later had to trim out another clip: a brief bit of Louie's 1984 Tonight Show appearance I included. I would have loved for it to stay, but Content ID had other plans.

Corrections: 

• Some people have brought to my attention that the time-saving choice to only read the final question once during most of the Karn era had been used at various points during the show's original two runs on an as-needed basis (most prominently during Dawson's 400-point era and Combs's Bullseye era). According to one commenter, Combs would occasionally say something like "For this round, we're going to move like lightning!"

• A bunch of car enthusiasts have pointed out that there is no such thing as a "1976 Ford Tempo" that Steve supposedly lived in early in his career. The detail seems to originate from an interview he did with People in 2013, so it's possible that he misremembered the model name, and it just got passed around from there. Or perhaps he said something else (like "Pinto") and the journalist mistranscribed it. It's not a very important detail either way.

• Louie Anderson's appearance on Celebrity Family Feud occurred in 2017, not 2019.