Never mind Hatfields and the McCoys. Forget the Capulets and the Montagues. The biggest Family Feud, for our money, is the game show that’s been pitting house against house for 50 years now.
Family Feud premiered on July 12, 1976, as the brainchild of Mark Goodson, a game show producer behind The Price Is Right, Match Game, and Password.
“The greatest challenge in the world is to invent a new game,” Goodson once explained, per The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows. “A good game show must actively involve the viewer. A good game show seeks the simplest, sparest framework. A good game show will have the viewer talking out loud to the TV.”
Goodson succeeded on all counts with Family Feud, which has run in some iteration almost continuously for half a century now. In the first-ever Family Feud episode, the Moseley family played the Abramowitzes, and the game show’s first-ever question challenged the dueling clans to name famous Georges. (In a sign of the times, the most popular survey answers to that question were inaugural U.S. President George Washington, yes, but also comedians George Burns and George Gobel, actor George Jessel, and wrestler Gorgeous George.)
Since then, American TV viewers have seen eight versions of Family Feuds and eight hosts. See the full chronology below.