America's Funniest Videos Part 1: You put the cat in the tub

I've never understood why America's Funniest Home Videos (AFV) doesn't get very much attention for how trailblazing it really was. I believe it is sometimes penalized for it's lowest common denominator humor, where babies falling down and people ripping their pants are the norm, but at it's core it was really a very democratic and diverse program that paved the way for other forms of media in the future.

Clip shows weren't invented by AFV, they were popular throughout the history of tv as an easy way for tv producers to block up time on their schedule easily. What makes AFV, and what helped it's longevity with the show going 20+ years strong, but it's the everyman style of the show. The show is based on a japanese show "Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan," where japanese people posted videos of their goofy japanese pranks, and America producers saw an easy way to fill time. Little did they know that American's had thousands upon thousands of ridiculous home videos.

The show was like an analog version of youtube where the videos you see were vetted by a group of writers, but there still was a tournament style every episode with thre videos competed for the audience's approval culminating in a Caesar-esque thumbs-up/thumbs-down situation with the audience voting on who is the winner and who the loser.

But usually the funniest videos come in 5 minute themed burst and that is where the true beauty of AFV shines out, blocks of American's at their happiest, most vulnerable and simply unguarded. The act of peaking into hundreds of people's home videos in an hour block is like flipping through the channels of peoples lives. Mostly at times of leisure where you just see families lounging on a living room floor, working on their roof, or sledding. There's always sledding clips, even in july.

Next time I'll go more in depth on the content and it's significance as well as the Legacy of AFV.