Feud closing in on WOF and J! in the ratings...

[PYLdude]

I'm not even going to go deeper into the "damned lies and statistics" angle where I believe that the show's ratings are inflated because of multiple airings, because you're entrenched in your position.

Then why hasn't Feud been pulling in these kind of ratings since 1999?

There may certainly be some inflation of the ratings, but to dismiss the rise totally based solely on the fact that the show airs multiple times a day ignores one basic fact: the show was sold that way from the start and has been sold that way for fifteen years.

If there is inflation going on, how much could there be realistically? I don't believe that much, considering that only a few years ago the show was pulling in sub-2.0 ratings for the same set of episodes.

[TLEberle]

If a show airs four times a day instead of two, does the show get two hours worth of ratings? That may not cause a doubling of what the amount would be if it was just an hour whenever it was on, but it's a nonzero increase.

To JJ's thing: Church was my answer.

[PYLdude]

There's two separate double runs. One consists strictly of reruns in the manner of weekend Wheel and Jeopardy, the other is your traditional double run. I would say that those would count separately in ratings.

[jage]

I have many more casual friends, family, and the like talking about Feud now than I've had since the early 90's. And none of these people have said they're turned off by the current stack of questions. Unscientific? Yes. But 10, or even 5 years ago, the most common reaction to mentioning Feud was "Oh, that's still on?"
I bet if there were message boards in the 70's, people would be complaining about Match Game and how the questions were so much more wholesome in the sixties.

[WarioBarker]

I bet if there were message boards in the 70's, people would be complaining about Match Game and how the questions were so much more wholesome in the sixties.

Except...they kinda weren't. Hopefully I'm remembering all this correctly...

The "name something" questions were used early on, but when the show got cancelled at one point (1964?) question writer Dick DeBartolo suggested to Goodson that they write "wacky"/"silly" questions for the few weeks the show still had on NBC's schedule (DeBartolo also wrote for MAD magazine at this point, so this wouldn't have been too much of a stretch for him) -- and Mark, reasonably assuming The Match Game couldn't get canned again, gave the go-ahead. The ratings jumped, NBC renewed the show, and they continued on with the silly questions through the end in '69.

Even then, the "name something" questions were used early in the 70s run before being ousted entirely, with the "wacky" questions getting stranger as the CBS era went on.

[TLEberle]

I have many more casual friends, family, and the like talking about Feud now than I've had since the early 90's. And none of these people have said they're turned off by the current stack of questions. Unscientific? Yes.

It would be more scientific and useful if you were to ask them "would you be put off by seeing "male missile" "turd cutter" or "dong sarong" on the board.

Match Game 1973 (and really, from 1974 on drew humor from implication and double entendre. Match Game 1998 forced the issue and made no bones about what the right answer was supposed to be. It was a different cultural period in 1973 than 1998. The fact that Family Feud puts out the sort of content they do tells you either what kind of audience they desire or what they feel they have to do in order to draw eyeballs.