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Australia’s Oldest Home Videos?

Dated fashions, grainy clips in 4:3 - just how old are the clips on Australia's Funniest Home Videos?

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Just how old is the content on Australia’s Funniest Home Videos?

The Shelley Craft-hosted show has been running for 21 years first presented by Graham Kennedy whacking VHS tapes into his old JVC video recorder. And it seems not much has changed.

While the show remains successful two decades on, just how much is first-run content and how many videos are Australian?

Many clips are grainy 4:3 videos that look like they were filmed on camcorders in the 1990s. In one recent episode only 7 clips were in widescreen 16:9 format. Date stamps are strategically blurred out by producers.

But there are telltale signs with dated hairstyles, old bulbous ’80s TVs in the corner of the rooms, 1970s tiles, 1980s trackpants or an old Coolabah cask on a picnic table.

Considered one of the most economic shows to run on TV, it still wins its timeslot.

Nine wouldn’t detail how many clips were first run, but a spokesperson told TV Tonight, “Of course not all videos are Australian. Material is sourced from all over the world… and that’s been the case for more than 21 years!

“Australia’s Funniest Home Videos is an entertainment show and therefore some clips (Australian, as well as others) are re-used for themeing purposes. eg: seasonal tie-ins and occasions such as Mother’s Day, Xmas, April Fools, etc.

“Our aim is to make the most entertaining show possible and therefore we present the best videos available, regardless of source.

“Each week around 125 clips are featured on Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, and approximately 5,000 will be played this year.”

19 Responses

  3. I saw a clip where a woman was dancing and the man behind her did something and fell down. I also saw that the woman had the old ’80s hairdos. Even the dancing outfit looked as if it was popular back then.

    I think that AFMV is a joke. If you watch almost any episode in its entirely, you would notice a few US clips crammed into it.

  4. i know the little girl who was in the video that was voted australias funniest home video the one where she was started to cry because she wanted to listen to jimmy barnes she turns 18 in 2 weeks time

  6. Of course it’s crap and always has been, despite not being at all funny, but it must keep rating for Nine, plus it’s something networks always love, in that it’s very cheap to make.

  7. I fell of a tree and into a river sometime in summer 1999. My stunning portrayal of fat tweenager first made it to the silver screen in about 2002. I was lucky enough to catch it again as recently as this year, in what must have been it’s 45th outing.

    It still moves people like it did the first time.

  9. FHV should be like that other underwhelming 9 program “Today”,they just troll the internet looking for “Funny” videos to replay on air……Cheap real Cheap…

  11. I suspect about only 1 in 7 are new clips David.

    Seriously why is it the bigger the TV we get the worse the content, most of the ones on YouTube are higher quality now. Speaking of, I just don’t see how a show like this is even relevant with YouTube.

  12. You’d get more laughs out of watching some ‘Top Fails of the Week’ 5 minute video on YouTube than a whole month of this show now. The demographics for it must be like 3AW or something.

  14. I loved this show as a kid. I tuned in about a year ago, and actually recognised one of my favourite clips (from the 90s) in the show! Was very disappointed!
    Do they still do the yearly prizes? They use dto have semi finals and finals, where they brought in the people who were actually in the videos. Obviously there were some old ones, as people do send in ‘old’ family tapes, and the kids in the films were grown up in real life. These days they could never do that as the tapes are repeated so much!

  15. I used to work at AFHVS, the daily routine for loggers was to pull a VHS tape off the shelf from a selected episode in past years, then log clips from that VHS that corresponded from a Digibeta tape of that episode.

    Each week the US digibeta tape would arrive on the EPs desk and we’d go through that tape with excitement thinking it was fresh meat… but more than likely they’d be nicking our old content too…. as there was a trans pacific kick in the balls sharing agreement.

  17. After watching the last 10 minutes of the show for the first time in years, I thought the top 4 videos were so lame, that the rest of the show must have been hopeless – I get better laughs from my own pets and kids – maybe time I send some of the clips in!

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