Development Series creator
Vin Di Bona had previously developed a similar concept to
AFV in
Animal Crack-Ups (1987–1990), a celebrity
game show that aired primarily as part of ABC's
Saturday morning lineup and was based on the Japanese series
Wakuwaku Dōbutsu Land (or "
Waku Waku Animal World"), a game in which contestants answered questions related to funny video clips involving animals (accompanied by narration that
anthropomorphized the clips' subjects). Di Bona—who decided to form his eponymous production company following his stint as a
line producer on the first season (
1985–1986) of the ABC action-adventure series
MacGyver—partnered with former
CBS News executive Joe Bellon, whose distribution company, Bellon Enterprises (founded after Bellon left CBS in 1985), at the time had been struggling in its efforts to sell the international rights to programming concepts—like
Wakuwaku—based on shows originally aired by the
Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). The two soon developed a
pitch for an American version of
Wakuwaku, using the licensed animal footage from the program, eventually selling it to ABC. In the spring of 1989, while Di Bona and his then-wife, Gina, attended the
Monte-Carlo Television Festival, the latter passed a booth for a distributor showcasing a segment from the TBS variety program
Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen TV (or
Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan), in which hosts
Ken Shimura and
Cha Kato presented and provided comedic narration over a package of funny caught-on-tape moments sent in by viewers; at the end of each show, audience members voted for their favorite clip among those featured. At Gina's insistence, Di Bona contacted TBS about licensing the rights to the concept. Di Bona, with Bellon's assistance in acquiring the clips from TBS, put together a presentation reel featuring footage from the
Gokigen TV home video segment; ABC executives, immediately after seeing the reel (Di Bona has claimed in interviews that the network decided to buy the proposed show four minutes into the pitch), decided to place an order for the concept that would become ''America's Funniest Home Videos''. However, the network intended for it to be a one-off special, unsure that a program showing other people's home movies would work as a weekly series. Di Bona enlisted most of the staff from
Animal Crack-Ups—including among others, writer
Todd Thicke (whose older brother, actor/host/songwriter
Alan Thicke, hosted
Crack-Ups in addition to his starring role in the ABC sitcom
Growing Pains), producer Steve Paskay, creative consultant Gina Di Bona, coordinating producers Joe and (his son and business partner) Greg Bellon, and director
Ron de Moraes—to work on the pilot special. Di Bona also borrowed the comedic narration style used in
Gokigen TV and
Wakuwaku, having the host provide voices to both humans and animals featured in the clips as well as exaggerated observational humor.
1989–1997: Bob Saget (1956–2022), the show's original host. The show debuted on November 26, 1989, as an hour-long special, produced by Di Bona and Steve Paskay, with Saget as host. Actress
Kellie Martin, then the star of fellow ABC series
Life Goes On (as Becca Thatcher), which would serve as the
lead-in program to
AFHV for the latter show's first four seasons, and
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (as the voice of
Daphne Blake), served as a special guest and assisted Saget in hosting two segments during the special, including the announcement of the three grand prize finalists (for the special, the first-place winner was awarded a $5,000 cash prize, while the second and third-place winners each won an
RCA camcorder). Married couple Helen and Bill Wholf of
Thompson, Ohio were awarded the show's first grand prize for a clip titled "The Dishwasher Lady", in which Bill discovers Helen had gotten herself stuck inside their dishwasher after her hair became entangled in the machine's spray arm while attempting to retrieve a dropped utensil. The clip, the
Panasonic OmniMovie HQ 1FX8-CCD camcorder that Bill Wholf used to record the video, and other artifacts from the series—including an annotated pilot script, an audience voting machine, and a presentation reel created to pitch the proposed special to ABC executives—were donated to the
Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of American History in 2008. ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' became an unexpected hit for ABC: the special's initial broadcast was watched by 32.8 million viewers, roughly double the network's average viewership in the Sunday 8:00 p.m.
ET timeslot at the time. Ratings increased over the course of the show, with much of it coming from viewers in the
Northeastern and
Midwestern U.S. snowed in by a significant
blizzard that hit those regions a few days earlier around the
Thanksgiving holiday. Impressed by the viewer response to the special, ABC decided to turn it into a weekly prime time series and ordered 10 additional half-hour episodes (later increased to 15); Besides acting as host, Saget also served as a member of its writing staff, alongside Todd Thicke (who stayed with the series until the 2014–15 season, and also served as a producer starting with its eighth season in 1996) and Robert M. Arnott.
Ernie Anderson, the longtime voice of ABC, was the program's original announcer, although
Charlie O'Donnell, then known mainly as the announcer for
Wheel of Fortune, occasionally substituted for him during some Season 1 episodes. Anderson also made an on-camera cameo appearance during the third season's first grand prize episode, originally aired on November 17, 1991 (an excerpt from that episode—featuring Saget prodding Anderson into reciting the signature vocal delivery he used to promote
The Love Boat—was featured during the February 16, 1997 episode in a brief segment paying tribute to Anderson, who died earlier in the month from
lung cancer). He was replaced in 1995 by radio and television actor
Gary Owens, who remained in that role until Saget's departure, although Anderson would briefly return via archived recordings. The show's theme song, "The Funny Things You Do", was performed by co-songwriter
Jill Colucci (who also sung the themes for ABC's "Something's Happening" and "America's Watching" promotional campaigns between 1987 and 1990) for most of the Saget run; this was replaced midway through Season 8 by a
funk rock duet rendition by Peter Hix and Terry Wood. (Colucci would make a cameo appearance during the show's second season to perform the song in the opening segment of the January 6, 1991 episode.) The set used throughout the Saget era was an open floorplan
living room design (originally a
papered three-wall design with a
bay window for the first three seasons, then redesigned for the 1992–93 season as a translucent-walled flatter frame outline utilizing a similar floorplan, though the furniture from the original set remained), with two large video screens on either side of the main set. Numerous comedy skits were performed on the set during Saget's tenure as host of
AFHV. The opening host segment of each episode was tied in with a skit featured in-between the transition from the opening title sequence and Saget's introduction. This usually consisted of several actors in a fake room (usually in the upper part of the audience section or in another soundstage, the setting within it changing each episode) pretending to get excited to watch the show. Sometimes, Saget would visit, attempt to interact with, and pretend to watch the show with the actors (with a pre-recording of Saget appearing on the TV set). These opening gags were scrapped after the fifth season. In Season 5, the show introduced an animated sidekick named "Stretchy McGillicuddy" (voiced by Danny Mann, and dropped after said season), who regularly teased Saget and did other bizarre things; one episode featured Stretchy—who often uttered the catchphrase, "Don't get a little touchy, Bob, I'm just a little stretchy!", in his appearances—appearing on the two large set monitors and Bob had to turn him off with a remote. Saget ended each episode with the
tagline, "Keep those cameras safely rolling", followed by a message to his wife who was implied to be watching the show at home (the former was phased out after season 5). The success of
AFHV—which regularly placed in the
Nielsen Top 5 ratings during its first season (even temporarily unseating the
CBS newsmagazine
60 Minutes as America's most-watched network television series in March 1990), and finished in fifth place among all network programs for the
1989–90 season—quickly led ABC to order a
pilot for a spin-off: ''America's Funniest... Part II'' aired on May 13, 1990 as a half-hour special that was hosted by Saget's
Full House co-star,
Dave Coulier (who played Joey Gladstone on the sitcom); as was the case with
AFHV following its debut special, ABC immediately picked up ''America's Funniest... Part II
as a weekly series for its 1990–91 fall schedule. Retitled America's Funniest People'', it debuted as a series on September 9, 1990, with actress/producer
Arleen Sorkin joining Coulier as co-host. (Sorkin was replaced by model
Tawny Kitaen for the show's third and fourth seasons.) The series focused on videos featuring people
intentionally trying to be funny by doing celebrity impressions, committing pranks, and performing short amateur comedy routines, among other things. For its first four seasons, ''America's Funniest Home Videos
aired on Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time; when the spin-off premiered in September 1990, AFHV
—then entering its second season—was paired with America's Funniest People
(following at 8:30 p.m.) to form an hour-long home video block. Beginning with their respective fifth and fourth seasons in September 1993, ABC made America's Funniest Home Videos
and America's Funniest People
the lead-off programs of its Sunday prime time lineup, moving them both an hour earlier (to 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., respectively) to replace Life Goes On
, which ended its four-season run that May; this also gave both shows a formidable rival in 60 Minutes
, which had regularly beaten its 7:00 competitors in the ratings since CBS permanently moved the newsmagazine to Sundays in 1975. In May 1994, ABC canceled America's Funniest People
after four seasons due to declining ratings, and decided to put the freshman sitcom On Our Own'' (a co-production of
Miller-Boyett Productions and
Warner Bros. Television, both of which were also behind Saget's other series,
Full House) in its former timeslot for the
1994–95 fall schedule; after
On Our Own was put on hiatus that December following an initial run of 13 episodes (it would return as part of the Friday
TGIF comedy lineup in March 1995 to complete its abbreviated 20-episode season), the network chose to expand ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' to one hour with back-to-back episodes, with that week's new episode occupying the first half-hour, followed by a repeat from a previous season to fill the remaining time, or vice versa. On February 1, 1996, ABC debuted another spin-off of
AFHV, ''
World's Funniest Videos; taped at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, this series—like America's Funniest People
—was also hosted by Coulier, alongside actress Eva LaRue (then playing on the ABC soap opera All My Children in the role of Dr. Maria Santos). Paired with a weekly version of the popular Before They Were Stars specials on Thursday nights, World's Funniest Videos'' focused on funny and amazing home videos from around the world. However, due to low ratings, ABC put the series on hiatus a few weeks after its debut, before cancelling it outright after only one season and
burning off the remaining episodes that summer. For Saget's final season on
AFHV (
1996–97), two new episodes aired back-to-back for several weeks over the course of the season, which increased the episode order that year to 30. Saget himself soon grew tired of the repetitive format and was eager to pursue other projects as a comedian, actor and director. Producer Di Bona held him to his contract, resulting in a frustrated Saget listlessly going through the motions, constantly getting out of character and making pointed remarks on the air during his last two seasons. Saget's contract expired in May 1997 and he decided to leave the show in June. However, according to Di Bona, the producers felt a change (and change of hosts) was needed for
AFV as a result of ABC going through a change of leadership (longtime parent company
Capital Cities/ABC had then recently completed the sale of its assets to current owner
The Walt Disney Company). His former
Full House castmates—except for
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—appeared for the penultimate aired episode of Season 8 (airing on May 9, 1997, in a special Friday broadcast as part of ABC's comedy-centered "
3D Week" programming stunt), preceding Saget's final episode as host, the season-ending $100,000 grand prize episode (aired in its regular slot on May 18). (The two final Saget episodes were rebroadcast on September 21, 1997, the day before production commenced on Season 9.) Saget returned to ''America's Funniest Home Videos
on three different occasions—first, to co-host a 20th anniversary special edition episode alongside then-host Tom Bergeron, which aired on November 29, 2009 (which was three days shy of AFV''s actual 20th anniversary date of its premiere on the air on November 26, 1989); a cameo appearance at the end of Bergeron's final episode on May 17, 2015, where he was driving a golf cart and to co-host a 30th anniversary documentary special (
AFV: America... This Is You!) alongside Bergeron and current host Ribeiro, which aired on December 8, 2019 (his last appearance prior to his death in early January 2022).
1997–1999: John Fugelsang & Daisy Fuentes After Saget's departure from the series, ABC sidelined ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' from the network's
1997–98 fall schedule; in the late fall of 1997, ABC decided to put the series on its Monday lineup as a replacement for the TV adaptation of
Timecop, which had been pulled from the schedule after five episodes due to persistently poor viewership. The first two episodes of the ninth season (the seventh and eighth to be taped in production order) aired as a "sneak peek" on November 21, 1997, as part of the
TGIF lineup, (which remained in use for the 2000–01 specials and the entirety of Bergeron's run as host as well as being featured in Alfonso Ribeiro's 2015 hosting audition tape). The show began to be alternately called
AFV at this point, with references to the abbreviated name being used in most on-air parlance going forward (though ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' remained the show's official title). Comedian
John Fugelsang and model-turned-television personality
Daisy Fuentes took over as co-hosts of the show. Three new writers—among them,
Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni
J. Elvis Weinstein and
Trace Beaulieu—joined holdover scribe Thicke (assigned the newly created role of supervising writer) on the writing staff, replacing Saget and Arnott. Like Saget had done during his run in certain videos within clip packages, Fugelsang and Fuentes humorously narrated the clips shown (either observationally or by exaggerating certain circumstances leading to the comedic moment). Owens was succeeded by an unknown announcer, who was subsequently replaced for the tenth season by voice actor
Jess Harnell, who still holds this position to this day. With ABC reserving the Sunday 7:00 p.m. ET slot for
The Wonderful World of Disney beginning that season (ironically putting the anthology series—which returned to broadcast television after a six-year run on the
Disney Channel—directly against
Fox's new
AFV-inspired series ''
The World's Funniest!''), the show changed timeslots several times over the next two seasons: after leading off ABC's Monday night lineup (at 8:00 p.m. ET) for Season 9, the network moved
AFV to Saturday nights at the start of Season 10 (
1998–99); the show was later moved to Thursday nights in March 1999, opposite the first hour of NBC's "
Must See TV" comedy lineup and airing directly against the top-rated
Friends. Alongside the 26 episodes picked up for Season 9, ten other episodes were produced with no contest winners and recycled clips from Season 8 with new John/Daisy voiceovers. They would sporadically air paired with other episodes back-to-back; the last to air premiered alongside the Season 10 premiere in October 1998. The ten episodes have never aired in reruns in syndication, and only two of the ten episodes are known to have rerun on ABC. One of the original 26 episodes was produced as a part one to one of the additional ten episodes, so that episode also never aired in syndication as a result. Ratings for the show suffered during this period, due to both less-than-satisfactory reception to the new hosts and changes to the show's format as well as the timeslot changes. Both Fuentes and Fugelsang left the show after two seasons in 1999. Their last original new episode—which aired on August 28, after a four-month delay (Season 10's penultimate first-run episode had aired on May 15)—was taped at the
House of Blues in
West Hollywood, California. Until the 2019 special
AFV: America... This Is You!, showcasing footage from the tenures of the other AFV hosts, the only honorable mention of Fugelsang and Fuentes and segments showcasing their run was the two-part 300th episode
AFV special in November 2003 (during the early years of the Bergeron run). While Fugelsang has not been seen in new recent never-before-seen footage on the road or in-studio on
AFV since his and Fuentes' departure, Fuentes was featured in interview segments discussing their time on the show for
America... This Is You!, while both Fugelsang and Fuentes conducted further interviews for the
America... This Is You! podcast.
1999–2000: Specials In May 1999, ABC announced that it would discontinue ''America's Funniest Home Videos
as a regular weekly series after its tenth season, but allowed the format to continue as a series of thematic specials hosted by various personalities, including ABC sitcom stars D. L. Hughley (of The Hughleys) and Richard Kind (of Spin City), and future AFV'' host
Tom Bergeron. Concurrently, Vin di Bona Productions produced a season intended for selected international markets, with
Kerri and
Mike Kasem (both children of legendary radio DJ and voice actor
Casey Kasem) as hosts. The show moved to a much smaller
soundstage on a set that featured various video screens and monitors (resembling
iMac computers) placed on shelves. A home video-exclusive special, ''America's Funniest Home Videos: Deluxe Uncensored
, was released on VHS and DVD in July 1999; hosted by Steve Carell and taped on the set used for the ninth and tenth seasons of the original series run, it featured somewhat more risqué content than that allowed on the television broadcasts (in a format similar to the 2019 Videos After Dark
specials). A sports-themed special, AFV: The Sports Edition'', hosted by
ESPN anchor
Stuart Scott, would later air on ABC in 2006 and was rebroadcast every
New Year's Day along with occasional broadcasts before
NBA playoff games (with a post 8:30 p.m. ET) tip-off until 2008. These specials (except for the special sports edition) were not taped in front of a live studio audience, with pre-recorded applause and laugh tracks were used during commercial bumpers and just before, during, and after video packages being used instead.
2001–2015: Tom Bergeron at the AFV Headquarters In October 2000, ABC announced that ''America's Funniest Home Videos
would return as a regular weekly series, ordering an eleventh season consisting of 13 episodes. On February 3, 2001, the show returned in its third format, this time with Bergeron (who was also hosting the syndicated Hollywood Squares'' at the time) serving as host. Episodes were expanded to a full hour (instead of the back-to-back half-hour episodic structure used from 1995 to 1999), and aired on Friday nights at 8:00 p.m. ET; however, it went on hiatus for two months during the
2001–02 season due in part to the
September 11 attacks and also because of ABC's decision to fill the Friday lineup with specials and a new, but short-lived lineup of reality and drama series (
The Mole II: The Next Betrayal,
Thieves and
Once and Again, of which
Thieves was cancelled after only ten episodes, the first eight of which aired);
AFV returned to the schedule (via reruns of the previous season) in December 2001, and began its twelfth season as a midseason replacement in February 2002. A new set (with a studio audience) was introduced—featuring a pillar with several monitors—when Bergeron's first season began. With ABC moving
The Wonderful World of Disney to Saturdays for the
2003–04 season, in September 2003, the show returned to its former Sunday 7:00 p.m. Eastern timeslot, still in its hour-long format (though special episodes occasionally aired on Friday nights until 2007). Unlike Saget, who provided voice-overs to the clips, Bergeron humorously narrated them, though he did lend comedic voiceovers similar to Saget's style to some clips from time to time during the eleventh season. Changes to the set for that season included the replacement of the round video wall by a curved video wall, the pillars being recolored to blue (sometimes other colors), the addition of curved light borders hanging through the set, and lights under the center stage with return of the abbreviated "AFV" logo. For Season 18 (
2007–08), the series began allowing viewers to upload their video submissions online at ABC.com; it would later direct viewers to submit their videos to a new standalone website, AFV.com, beginning with Season 23 (
2012–13), in addition to the existing practice of submitting videos via standard mail. In Season 22 (
2011–12),
AFV released an
iOS app on the
App Store, allowing
Apple mobile device users to record and directly upload videos for submission to the show; a version for
Android devices was released the following season. The final six seasons of Bergeron's run as host fell during two major milestones in the series' history. In
2009, in commemoration of its 20th season, the show started its "Funny Since 1989" campaign and broadcast a special 20th anniversary episode on November 29, featuring a guest appearance by Saget in his return to
AFV for the first time since his 1997 departure. Both Saget and Bergeron ended that episode with a pinata party skit and a nod to the
Star Wars lightsaber fight scenes during the closing credits (Disney, owner of show co-producer ABC Entertainment and its namesake network, would coincidentally later acquire the franchise through its 2011 purchase of
Lucasfilm), with the design of the pinatas resembling the two hosts. On March 7, 2014, Bergeron announced on his
Twitter account that he would step down as host of
AFV at the conclusion of its 25th season. The series commemorated its silver anniversary for its
2014–15 season, and broadcast a 25th Anniversary Celebrity Celebration special on February 15, 2015, in which Bergeron and ABC sitcom stars
Anthony Anderson,
Tracee Ellis Ross (both co-leads of
Black-ish) and
Cristela Alonzo (of
Cristela) recounted memorable videos from the show's history, with one of three nominees from the pool being awarded a
Disney Cruise Line vacation grand prize. Bergeron's penultimate episode (the last episode he hosted from the show's soundstage and the final (and season 25's second) $100,000 show of his tenure) aired on May 10, 2015, incorporating periodic montages of funny home videos that defined the show's then-25-year run. His final episode as host, which was also the 25th season finale, aired the following week on May 17; taped on-location at
Disneyland for that season's edition of the annual "Grand Prize Spectacular" (which utilized various formats since 2005, and featured one of the two (formerly three) $100,000 winners from the current season winning a
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, or in earlier seasons, an
Adventures by Disney vacation package),
AFVs 25th anniversary and the Disneyland Resort's 60th Anniversary Diamond Celebration (which began on May 22, 2015) featured an
auto-tuned montage of clips and outtakes from Bergeron's run as host and closed with him being escorted after walking off the outdoor stage near
Sleeping Beauty Castle following the grand prize presentation on a golf cart driven by Saget in a special
cameo appearance. (Bergeron's 15-year run is the longest hosting tenure for the series to date.) Bergeron would later make an in-studio guest appearance alongside his successor, Alfonso Ribeiro, in the Season 26 "Grand Prize Spectacular" finale (aired on May 22, 2016), in which he played the show's final audience participation game segment ("Who Breaks It?") and won an Ribiero
AFV pillow and socks. He was featured alongside fellow hosts Ribeiro, Saget and Fuentes in the 2019 special
AFV: America...This Is You!.
2015–present: Alfonso Ribeiro On May 19, 2015, two days after Bergeron's final episode aired, ABC announced that
Alfonso Ribeiro (known for his role as
Carlton Banks on
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) would take over as host of ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' starting with its
26th season (premiering on October 11 of that year). Bergeron formally introduced Ribeiro's new role as host during the latter's guest performance on the
20th season finale of
Dancing with the Stars. (Ribeiro competed during and won the
previous season; coincidentally, as Bergeron had done from the dance competition series' 2005 debut until his 2015 departure from
AFV, Ribeiro would later begin co-hosting
DWTS, in addition to his existing
AFV duties, in
2022.) Prior to becoming host, Ribeiro appeared on the show's March 8, 2015 episode playing an audience participation game (called "Who's Makin' That Racket?") alongside then-host Bergeron. , host since 2015. Ribeiro continued Bergeron's concept of humorously narrating clips, sometimes making extensive use of rhymes in his voiceovers. While some of the Bergeron-era clip segments, the in-studio audience and background parts of the Bergeron-era set props remained intact and/or continued into the first five years of Ribeiro's hosting tenure, the stage was updated to feature a metal floor layout and stairway connected to a puzzle-style cube screen composed of smaller sized flat-panel TV screens, while new segments (developed especially for Ribiero's run) were incorporated into the show. Audience participation games introduced during the Bergeron era were eliminated for the 27th season (
2016–17). Additional set props such as arrow-styled flat-panel monitors and lit color-changing tables (where selected audience members not assigned to the bleacher areas sit) were added to the
AFV set in 2019. For its
28th season (premiering on October 8, 2017),
AFV was displaced from its longtime 7:00 p.m. ET slot to make room for the reality competition series
The Toy Box (which was in its second and final season), resulting in the former being moved to 8:00 p.m. ET. Periodically over the course of three months (between November 26, 2017 and February 4, 2018), the show employed a "repeat/new" episode scheduling format similar to that employed during the later Saget and Fugelsang/Fuentes eras, with new episodes in the 7:00 p.m. hour (occasionally reduced to a single hour block due to holiday movie presentations and specials airing in 8:00 p.m. slot during the holiday season), before permanently returning to the earlier slot on February 11, 2018. On October 29, 2018, ABC renewed
AFV for two more seasons, extending the series for its 30th and 31st seasons (premiering on September 29, 2019 and October 18, 2020, respectively). On December 8, 2019 (following a new episode in its regular slot), ABC broadcast
AFV: America, This is You!, a retrospective documentary commemorating
AFVs 30th anniversary; the special featured appearances by creator/executive producer Vin di Bona and four of the five hosts—Ribeiro, Saget (in his final
AFV appearance before his death in January 2022), Fuentes and Bergeron—and chronicled the show's development and pop culture status. Production was suspended before the completion of the
30th season due to the
COVID-19 pandemic; in lieu of its standard "grand prize" season finale format, a quarantine themed special,
AFV@Home, aired on May 17, 2020; similar in concept to CBS's
AFV-styled
The Greatest AtHome Videos (which aired its initial special two days prior) and incorporating hosted segments recorded at Ribeiro's Los Angeles home, the special featured humorous videos submitted to the program and culled from various social media platforms that were filmed mainly during
stay-at-home isolation. The series returned to the studio for its
31st season (which premiered on October 18, 2020), however, studio segments utilized a virtual audience—a concept first used for the last three episodes of season 30 prior to the in-studio production shutdown—to comply with federal
social distancing guidelines, consisting of audience members appearing and interviews with the grand prize nominees being conducted via
videotelephony on the various set monitors. On June 11, 2021, the fourth offshoot of the franchise, ''
America's Funniest Home Videos: Animal Edition'', premiered on
Nat Geo Wild (which ABC acquired through its
2019 purchase of most of
21st Century Fox's assets). On January 9, 2022, during the
32nd season (which premiered on October 3, 2021), original host Bob Saget was found dead in his room at a
Ritz Carlton hotel near
Williamsburg, Florida, a day after his stand-up comedy performance in nearby
Orlando. (Saget's death was announced during an
ABC News special report that interrupted the end of a new episode airing that night.) The show paid tribute to him in the January 16, 2022 episode, which opened with a dedication to Saget by Alfonso Ribeiro, clips of Saget's tenure as host, and a brief discussion between him and Bergeron from the 2009 20th anniversary special, along with a standard pre-credits dedication; a tribute segment featuring clips from the Saget era was featured in subsequent episodes for the remainder of Season 32. After two years of using a virtual audience, the
33rd season (which debuted on October 2, 2022) returned to using an in-person studio audience, although nominees for the weekly grand prize contest would continue to appear via remote; the cash amounts for the videos selected for the weekly prize contest were also increased for the first time since
AFVs series debut, doubling the first place prize to $20,000 (from $10,000), second place to $6,000 (from $3,000), and third place to $4,000 (from $2,000). For
Season 34, in addition to standard hour-long episodes in the show's regular timeslot, ABC aired edited half-hour versions of
AFV episodes from the previous season on selected Sundays during the early fall to fill airtime following
Wonderful World of Disney film presentations scheduled to end prior to the conclusion of the network's Sunday lineup. (Although Ribeiro is a SAG-AFTRA member—being exempted from the strike under the separate Network Television Code contract—and co-executive producer/head writer Mike Palleschi and co-writer Erik Lohla are WGA members, the series was not affected by the
SAG-AFTRA and
Writers Guild of America strikes, the latter having ended four days before Season 34's October 1, 2023 premiere.) ==Seasonal contests==