July 12, 1976, barely a week after our country celebrated its bicentennial, a fresh, new and exciting game show hit the daytime airwaves, back in the glory days of ABC, when morning chat fests weren't all the rage.
I'm still amazed. A show that I find to be a bit boring and slow has been on TV for most of the past 44 years.
Any game show historian can recite all sorts of trivia about the show. They can explain how the show is based upon the bonus game of TV's Match Game, how other hosts were considered and why Richard Dawson, a regular panelist on Match Game since its revamped debut in 1973, got the job.
I have watched the show in every incarnation, and I find it less appealing than ever.
As a kid who enjoyed game shows, it had its appeal. Generally I find that shows with a play-along factor are more fun to watch. I might not have been worldly as a kid, but I could play along with some of the questions. They were survey questions, not general knowledge trivia questions, so there were multiple answers, and wrong answers were those that simply didn't make the survey. I think the fact that you didn't have to be Jeopardy smart to play along was one factor that made it a success.
 |
| Richard Dawson (photo via laist.com) |
Thanks to cable television and digi-nets, we've had chances to review Dawson's work during the past 25 or so years. I get why the show worked back in the day, but I find it rather slow and dull at this point in my life. The bonus round was entertaining, but you had to sit through rounds of mundane questions to get to it.
The show was successful enough to earn a nighttime edition, in addition to the weekday morning slot over most of these ABC stations. And it inspired occasional celebrity editions, which ABC dropped into its prime time schedule. It had a nice run of about nine years.
It didn't take more than a few years before the show returned in the late 1980s for another several years. Most of that time it was helmed by Ray Combs. The show looked and played largely the same, although there was a tweak to it eventually. Under Combs, the host's banter had a bit more playful and mischievous of a tone, but it seemed to do well. I watched it now and again.
Combs was relieved of his duties after six years or so, and Dawson was brought back in an attempt to rejuvenate the show, nearly a decade after he had signed off as its host. That lasted a year. The show was dead again.
Approximately four years later, Feud was back again, circa 1999, with Minnesota-born comedian Louie Anderson as the host. The look and theme of the show were different, but for the most part it was that familiar show we all knew. If you would have told me in 1999 that the show would air uninterrupted for more than two decades, I'd have bet $100 you were wrong.
The show switched hosts after a few years, with Home Improvement's Richard Karn taking over for four years. Then came Seinfeld's John O'Hurley for four years. Each guy had his own style and personality, but none of them dazzled me. I can't speak to how the ratings were, but they were good enough to bring the show back for yet another year.
Then in 2010 Feud brought in Steve Harvey, and the show has done rather well for years.
I don't get the appeal, but it doesn't matter. Feud is doing quite well without me.
I get why it's successful, to a point. As my buddy and I say, we live in a Jerry Springer society. The show went from asking mundane questions, such as "Name something you need for a day at the beach?" to "Name an organ that only an idiot would donate while he's still alive?" People are going to say "his penis," and it makes the survey.
When a contestant answers "penis," Steve Harvey does a little routine, because that's what the audience wants, and the producers post a euphemism on the board, to the roar of the crowd. It might be "his ding-a-ling," or it might be "his baloney pony." The crowd will go wild, America has been entertained.
For some, Feud is fun. The old reruns offer nostalgic charm, or the new episodes offer "outrageous" answers that are hilarious. The game is a pretty good one, and timeless. Questions can be updated to reflect the times. Questions can be written with a specific audience in mind. After more than four decades, it's still making money for a lot of people.
For me, it has had its moments. Today, the nostalgic charm of Dawson is only good in small doses. Since I don't watch Family Feud to see a comedian do his act while hosting the show, Harvey does nothing for me. And I don't find his shtick to be that funny. But again, he doesn't need me.
Faster isn't always better, but after four decades I can say that Feud has given me something that is entertaining, and worth more than 30 minutes of my time in any given week, although I don't get a chance to watch it very often. The Game Show Network has a show called America Says, which is basically Feud against the clock. It's a more entertaining game than Feud, and it only took four decades of Feud success for somebody to come up with a knock off version I enjoy.
Perhaps I'll be reminiscing about America Says in four decades. I'd be happy with that.
