"Family Feud" premieres on ABC - July 12th, 1976

On this day in 1976, the long-running TV game show “Family Feud” aired for the first time on ABC.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gay Bluesier and in this episode, we're looking at
the story behind one of the most famous game shows

(00:21):
in TV history, including the notorious kissing controversy sparked by
its original hosts. The day was July twelfth, nineteen seventy six.
The long running TV game show Family Feud aired for
the first time on ABC. It was part of a

(00:44):
game show boom in the mid nineteen seventies, when the
three major networks combined were airing as many as two
dozen different game shows every day. Many of those shows
were produced by Goodson Todman productions, including Alix Trebek's Doubledare,
Bob Barker's The Prices Right, and Gene Rayburn's Match Game.

(01:06):
Family Feud was developed as a spin off of that
last one, which had premiered on CBS in nineteen seventy three.
Match games format tasked contestants with filling in the blank
in a given sentence in the hopes of matching the
written responses provided by a panel of celebrity guests. One
of the most frequent and most popular panelists was British

(01:29):
actor and comedian Richard Dawson, who would later go on
to host Family Feud. In one of the bonus rounds
of Match Game, called super Match, the contestant was shown
a short fill in the blank phrase for which the
members of a previous studio audience had provided responses. The
three most common answers were hidden on the board, and

(01:50):
the contestant had to try to match one of them
in order to win the corresponding cash prize, with the
most popular response being worth the most money in Team
seventy six. Match Game's success convinced Goodson Todman to develop
a new game show for ABC based on the super
Match formula, and because Richard Dawson was popular with viewers

(02:12):
and already familiar with the concept, he was hired on
as its host. The premise of Family Feud expanded on
the audience match format by having two families compete against
each other to guess the most popular responses to a
survey question posed to one hundred people. The more answers
a family guest, the more points they earned, with the

(02:34):
highest scoring family continuing on to a bonus round for
a chance to win ten thousand dollars. Each round began
with a member from each opposing family facing off for
control of the board by trying to be the first
to ring in with a correct answer. Here's a clip
from an early episode with Richard Dawson to show you
how it all played out.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
One hundred people survey. Top six answers are on the board.
You got to try and get the most popular answer.
Here's the question, name an occasion in their children's lives
makes parents get sentimental? Marrit they're married?

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Why are past?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
We're going to appraise it.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
In the early years of Family Feud, the survey responses
were provided by volunteers who answered the writer's questions through
a mailing list, but in later seasons, the surveys were
conducted by a polling firm that would call random people
on the phone and solicit their responses without disclosing what
exactly they'd be used for. Relatable topical questions were the

(03:39):
standard during Dawson's tenure, but the writers would occasionally slip
in more risque questions meant to solicit humorous or off
color responses. That approach became more common as the years
went by as fans of the current Steve Harvey iteration
of the show are no doubt aware of. Still that's
not the same that Family Feud was completely innocent. In

(04:02):
its beginnings, Richard Dawson was known for his dry wit
and sarcasm, but most of all for his pension for
kissing the female contestants, often right on the lips. He
doled out this greeting to adult women of all ages, races,
and physical appearances, a liberal approach that earned him the
nickname the Kissing Bandit. Dawson's trademark smooches became such an

(04:27):
established part of the show that a Family Feud production
assistant was reportedly tasked with performing a mouth check ahead
of each episode to make sure contestants were free of disease.
Women had the option to opt out in favor of
a kiss on the cheek or a handshake, but because
many found Dawson so endearing, they often went along with it.

(04:50):
Decades later, Richard Dawson claimed to have adopted the kissing
gesture on the fly as a way to put a
nervous female contestant at ease. According to him, one day,
just a few weeks into the show's first season, a
competing family was asked to name a green vegetable, and
as he described, quote, I got to a lady and
I could see her hands just shaking. So I always

(05:12):
grabbed a hand and said, it's not open heart surgery.
She's still shaking. So I'm going to do something that
my mom would do to me whenever I had a
problem of any kind. I kissed her on the cheek
and I said that's for luck, and she said asparagus.
It's like I whispered the answer in her ear, but
you can see I didn't well intentioned or not. Some

(05:35):
viewers were understandably uncomfortable with the constant kissing, and ABC's
Standards and Practices division weren't big fans of it either. Eventually,
after enough people complained, the show's producers conducted a different
kind of survey, asking viewers to write in whether they
were four or against the kissing. In a clear sign

(05:56):
of the times, the response was overwhelmingly positive. According to
producer Howard Felscher, quote, I don't remember the exact totals,
but it was something like fourteen thousand who said kiss
in three or four hundred who said don't kiss. It
was that lopsided. Although locking lips with contestants would never

(06:16):
fly today, it seemed to work out for Richard Dawson.
In nineteen eighty one, he kissed a contestant named Gretchen Johnson,
and ten years later the two of them wound up
getting married. Family Feud did all right for itself as well.
The show was a ratings hit right out of the
gate and quickly eclipsed its parent show Match Game and popularity.

(06:39):
Dawson continued to host Family Feud until its cancelation in
nineteen eighty five. Then three years later, the show was
revived by CBS, with comedian Ray Combs taking over hosting duties.
The show was canceled again in nineteen ninety three, but
was briefly brought back the following year, with Richard Dawson

(06:59):
returning by popular demand to host a single season. After
Dawson's swan song, Family Feud ceased production until nineteen ninety nine,
when it was resurrected yet again, this time seemingly for good.
Three different actors tried their hand at hosting over the
next decade, Louis Anderson, Richard carn and John O'Hurley. Then,

(07:22):
in twenty ten, comedian Steve Harvey stepped into the role
and continues to host the show to this day. The
game of family Feud has remained much the same through
all those different incarnations, but in a wise show of restraint,
every host since Dawson has kept their lips to themselves.

(07:44):
I'm Gabe Blues Gay and hopefully you now know a
little more about history today than you did yesterday. If
you'd like to keep up with the show, you can
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Have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them
my way by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com.

(08:08):
Thanks to Casby Bias for producing the show, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again
tomorrow for another day in History class.