The Family Feud Story: The Ray Combs Revival

the original run of family feud with richard dawson began in 1976 kicking off a spectacularly successful run that consistently occupied the number one spot in network daytime and evening syndication but by the mid-80s the show's ratings were drooping thanks to general overexposure ill-devised format changes and the meteoric rise of wheel of fortune both versions of the show came to a dignified end in 1985 after which dawson basically retired and it seemed like the story of family feud had come to a decisive end as must happen to all good things right smile because it happened ah what the heck enough time has passed this format still has life let's bring back the feud [Music] family feud was created by mark goodson who didn't believe that the 1985 cancellation was so much an end to the show as the beginning of a brief little hiatus after all the format of the game was strong and he believed that with a few tweaks it was still as viable as ever so around early 1987 he reassembled the family feud staff and set out to make a revival the show was going to be largely the same you know goodson believed in the format he just had one crucial change that needed to be made no more richard dawson under any circumstances this revival project was staffed by more or less the same crew of people that had worked on the original show and nine years of dealing with the demanding brash egotistical nature of dawson had eliminated the possibility of any of them willingly working with him ever again so goodson and his trusty producer howard felscher set out on the search for a new host and from the beginning felsher had a guy one who will probably surprise you his name was joe namath broadway joe joe willie namath namath is one of the most prolific football stars of all time he was the quarterback for the university of alabama under coach bear bryant in his college days during which time he led the team to a national championship and he played for the new york jets afterward leading them to their first end as of 2021 their only super bowl win in 1969 but he was more famous as a media personality having hosted a successful talk show for a season in 1969 and maintaining a consistent presence in pop culture thereafter whether through acting sports commentating or ovaltine commercials my old pal oval team he was quite the personality and even by 1987 he was still well within the public eye and howard felsher really wanted him to host family feud and when namath was approached he was receptive to this idea and agreed to come aboard the project for months it seemed as though this revival was gearing up to have joe namath as its star he taped numerous run-throughs in the studio with real families and boy what i would give to see these run-throughs if you ever watch joe namath he's got this distinctively laid-back air about him he speaks slowly his voice has a bit of a draw he always seems calm and relaxed borderline aloof so he was an interesting choice for a job naturally associated with high energy and enthusiasm as the show's development continued it seemed like a lock for broadway joe who ultimately signed a contract with the family feud logo on it but soon after mark goodson began having second thoughts enthusiasm around joe namath was split among family feud staff and as the revival progressed goodson was becoming less comfortable with the idea of casting him ultimately for reasons we'll never truly know he decided that joe namath just wasn't the guy and he vetoed his candidacy so the search for a host continued you know it's always a tricky task to find a personality that can effectively perform the traffic cop elements of the show while still having enough personality to keep the show entertaining finding one or the other was easy but threading the needle between the two is tough which is part of what makes game show hosting so difficult but soon after namuth was canned they found the man for the job his name was ray combs rey comb wait what's his full name raymond neil combs jr was a comedian who had started performing in his native ohio during the late 70s later moving to indianapolis to sell furniture while doing his comedy on the side in his early days his signature bit was one in which he would have his audience sing along to quote the worst tv theme songs after writing a letter to hometown hero david letterman for some words of encouragement he decided on a whim to move from the hoosier state to los angeles in 1982 so he could pursue a career in comedy against all odds he was actually met with decent success and it wasn't long before he entered the ultra glamorous world of sitcom audience warm-up back in the days when sitcoms were everywhere and actually had real studio audiences there would always be a lot of down time before and in between scenes so the show would bring in a guy to fill the time with laughter and keep the audience cheery given the amount of time to fill and the fact that the audience wasn't really there to listen to some no-name comedian tell jokes the warm-up comic was actually a tough and thankless position but ray combs quickly gained a reputation as the master of the format while he was working sitcoms like the facts of life and the golden girls his sets became known for often enough garnering bigger laughs than the shows they were accompanying and production crews were known to alter their schedules around the availability of ray combs one of those sitcoms he worked amen was made by a company called carson productions and the namesake carson was johnny carson the host of the tonight show who decided to attend a taping of his sitcom one day he was backstage before the cameras even started rolling and he noted the uproar coming from the crowd reacting to some warm-up comic carson was intrigued and he directed his staff to look into the guy that seemed to be bringing the house down they did and they booked them for an appearance on the tonight show in october of 1986. and here is raycombs [Music] thank you i can't i'm deciding whether or not to sign the back of my driver's license to donate my organs when i die now i think this is a good thing but i'm kind of afraid because we literally have no control over whose organs they give us i had a nightmare that my vision went bad and they gave me the eyes of a guy who was killed when he pulled out in front of a bus that he didn't see [Applause] all right ladies let me just say one thing my entire life i always had a dream that someday i'd be able to walk out on this show and make people laugh and tonight you made that dream come true thank you and good night his set was very well received so much so that the audience responded to it with a standing ovation an extreme rarity for a first-time comedian on tonight johnny invited him to take a seat and banter for a little while the telltale indicator of success after doing a set in front of those fabled curtains the appearance did exactly what rey was hoping for boost his comedic clout and opened the floodgates for appearances and gigs he accepted a few of them which landed him a slot on hollywood squares for a time in early 1987 but it was when he entered talks with the bright minds behind family feud that he felt he was approaching his big break goodson and felsher were both aware of rey after his tonight's show appearance and subsequent blip of popularity at age 31 and standing five foot eight combs had an everyman appeal his comedy was accessible he had a bright personality and he had a generally unassuming demeanor all of which rendered him a fairly safe choice for the job sure enough after enough run-throughs the show's staff rallied around ray combs with mark goodson being especially enthusiastic about this fresh talent we are ready to tape a pilot one thing though who's going to fund it which network is going to want this show well let me introduce you to a man named michael brockman i've actually talked about brockman before he was the figure at cbs most instrumental in giving pat sajak a late night talk show click here if you don't know that story but he's relevant here because he was a hot shot at abc during the mid 70s when family feud was still being pitched i mentioned in part one that family feud went to abc since that's where fred silverman was by this point which i later learned might have played a small role but that's not the real reason family feud still had to be pitched around just like any other show i mentioned that nbc passed on an early version of the concept based on run-throughs and had no further interest so the show was taken to abc where michael brockman worked at the time and he responded positively to the idea and he worked closely alongside mark goodson and his creative group to revise and improve the format for what they all hoped would be a run on abc run-throughs continued and brockman eventually became positive enough in the show that he was ready to commission a pilot one problem though he didn't actually have the authority to do that he needed approval from abc brass particularly michael eisner yes that michael eisner before he was ceo of disney he was in charge of programming at abc eisner wasn't giving brockman an answer and goodson's team was growing impatient threatening to take the concept to cbs brockman was friends with many on goodson's team and didn't want to let them down so they agreed on a hard deadline to get a decision from abc the day arrived still no answer so brockman was preparing to enter an executive's office for what could have ended up being an unpleasant meeting because he was going to fight for the project aggressively if needed because it was less than an hour until family feud got put in front of cbs but as he was gearing up for this conversation brockman actually ran into eisner in a hallway where eisner casually gave the approval for the concept to proceed and that's the story of how family feud ended up on abc this one guy really went to bat for it so when goodson was trying to bring it back 13 years later who do you think he called by this point brockman was working at cbs where he was in charge of daytime and late night and his rank at cbs meant that he didn't have to answer to as many people to get a show on the air goodson reached out to brockman early in the development of this revival and brockman was enthusiastic about the idea not only did he like family feud and the team that made it he thought the wild success of family feud's first incarnation could potentially be replicated so as soon as the revival was presented to him he took steps to acquire the broadcast rights for cbs he again worked alongside the creative team as the show was in development and once again his network agreed to foot the bill for a pilot taped in august of 1987. right off the bat the thing that sticks out about this pilot is the set gone is the hokey wood grain antique look of the dawson version and in was a bolder color scheme with a lot of blue and a lot of red also gone was the needlepoint on the family backdrops hallelujah they updated the board and the buzzer and generally gave the whole show a visual overhaul even if the set still maintained the same layout and then out walks ray combs and it's natural to want to compare him to his predecessor rey and richard both started in comedy and they both like to invade the personal space of fast money players but that is about where the similarities end between the two now i am not a critic and it's a bit difficult to put this all into words but here is my best attempt dawson's comedic style and his hosting style never really betrayed a comedic background he was always at ease his remarks and rye quips seemed not to be to get laughs out of the audience but more to just charm whoever he was talking to he was always very well put together and he drew upon his persona of being a cultured briton to seem like the coolest figure at a black tie social event when really he's talking to jim wright from west virginia on the set of a game show with needlepoint birds in the background his appeal came from this vague idea that he is better than the people he's interacting with but he was willing to treat them like his peers as if to let us all in on a sect of society that we'll never really be a part of that's a lot of words to say that richard was cool relaxed and effortlessly witty on the other hand rey did betray a comedic background in this pilot episode i think the biggest difference in how he interacts with the families aside from the fact that he's not kissing everyone thank god it's that everything he says seems deliberate he's always hunting for a joke or something he can spin into a joke you know just some punch line somewhere uh i'll say where omar gaddafi is from libya libya see i'm not afraid of this guy gaddafi because i don't think he's real bright think about this he took over a country and he made himself a colonel that's it i guess you could say the comedy of this pilot is much more in the setup followed by punchline category where richards was more offhanded and looser because he was sharp and versatile enough to pull that type of comedy off this is not to say that one is better than the other rey is genuinely funny at points he is a seasoned comedian after all and he definitely gets laughs even if not quite everything lands and for what it's worth he plays the traffic cop part of the role very well which is less obvious just because there's nothing wrong with the way he does it and besides pilots are all about showcasing potential nothing is ever fully baked on the first go it's just that family feud was going to have a different feel and energy about it but different does not inherently equal worse and it would seem that cbs agreed with me on that because on the strength of this pilot they picked up the show for the 88-89 season setting it to air at 10 a.m for the usual half hour and as it would turn out the pilot made its rounds in the syndication circuit as well network daytime was cushy and nice but the money was in evening syndication family feud's original run in syndication and now merv griffin's wheel of fortune plus jeopardy powerhouse were showing that a hit in syndication could take the nation by storm and basically print money for everyone involved so if family feud was going to reclaim its bygone popularity syndication was going to be a big piece of the puzzle this time around the show found a buyer right off the bat in lbs communications a major player in television syndication but one known more for scripted shows than game shows but lbs was not playing around they gave the show a 20 million dollar budget and proceeded to drum up enormous hype for the revival within the television industry you see by this point almost 10 years since family feud originally showed how powerful evening syndication was the amount of programming in those time periods had soared everyone wanted a piece of this pie and there was only so much to go around any big project being shopped around was a risk if the show didn't find stations it's a wasted investment then if the show doesn't do good your show gets dropped by your stations and it's a wasted investment lbs at this point was known for having some financial struggles so betting big on a reboot of family feud was a bold gamble but early on it looked like it was shaping up to pay off they got a healthy bunch of stations to commit to carrying the show including the bulk of stations owned and operated by nbc which automatically landed them new york la and chicago as well as a bunch of other markets i also found out that there was a bit of controversy when ksl in salt lake city declined to pick up the show which is notable only because that is the only tv station in the country owned by the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints or the mormon church of which rey was a devoted member one being billed as quote tv's first lds game show host ray said in an interview that he was embarrassed and disturbed that they wouldn't pick up the show but otherwise family feud was gearing up for a big splash expectations were high the show had big shoes to fill and its competition was stiffer than ever and it had a virtual nobody as its host soon enough it hit the air the daytime version premiered first on july 4th in 1988. everything's pretty much the same as in the pilot except that they made a few tweaks to the set including bringing back the needlepoint also curiously they disposed with the option to pass or play everyone just plays by default that's the only change to the format so outside of the pilot how was ray combs as a host well a lot of the stiffness of the pilot got worked out fairly early and rey seems a lot more comfortable his goofy comedy was the star of the show and for what it's worth as he grew more comfortable with this show he was able to work in a lot more subtle remarks so don't get the idea that rey just turned the whole show into a stand-up set there were some notable recurring bits from throughout rey's run i found two examples of him deciding to let a contestant host the show while he pretended to be a member of the family really playing up the stereotype of an enthusiastic contestant phil why don't you just run the questions down the line for me take over let me have a break and i'll be over here move on keep on moving we got a tight game here between the castellano family and the lewis family phil just ask the question phil phil get in the shot man turn around and face this way so they can see you both i'm hiding and i say show me whatever he said okay [Applause] also in the rare event that the first fast money contestant won the grand prize on their own rey would instruct everyone in the studio to be quiet and he would tell the second contestant that their partner had done terribly before proceeding to ask them a series of ridiculous questions all right there were three stooges named curly's wife and perhaps most widely known was a bit where rey would wear the high heels of women who came on the show and was actually able to carry himself quite well so there you have it i guess dawson kissed the women and rey tried out their footwear also speaking of dawson again it was natural for people watching to compare the two hosts and i've already done a little bit of that but really i think ray combs said it best when in 1988 he told the newspaper quote people say those are big shoes to fill i don't have to wear his shoes i've got my own and that's really a fair assessment these two are very different talents on one hand a warm upbeat goofy midwesterner and on the other a sharp relaxed rye brit and preference for one over the other is purely preference i don't think it's fair to say that one is better than the other and that's not my job anyway the only thing that mattered was whether people were watching it and on that note the ratings for the first season were good but not great for a new game show it did pretty well by the season's end it was the third most popular game show in syndication behind the merv griffin monolith that may sound great but in reality okay november of 1988 had family feud at a 6.4 rating and i don't want to get too involved in what these numbers really mean but i will say that less than four years earlier in february of 1985 dawson's version of the show was pulling in an 8.3 which was low enough to get the show cancelled now that's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison because the syndication landscape had changed some in the intervening years and this revival was still brand new in november and for a regular game show this early performance could very well have been considered a solid performance but for a show carrying the name of the one-time king of syndication debuting below like nine was pretty underwhelming now let's back up for a second and just talk about syndication in general for one thing i've been referring to evening syndication as mainly corresponding to the seven to eight o'clock prime access hour which was the most lucrative slot in syndication and the one family feud and wheel of fortune most often ended up in but stations could buy these shows and slot them pretty much wherever meaning that depending on where you lived family feud may have come on much earlier maybe like 5 30 or perhaps even much later in the overnight hours prime access went to shows that the station had the most faith in and by 1988 most stations already had pretty reliable shows in that time period and if they didn't there was bound to be someone offering them something tried and true like reruns of the cosby show so to get on in prime access was a lot harder in 1988 than it was in 1977 and everything was about to get harder thanks to this woman phil donahue might have been the pioneer of this category of television dubbed the tabloid talk show but oprah winfrey was the one who sent it into the stars these talk shows were built on flashy individuals often with taboo attributes and they were a hit with viewers and stations in syndication this genre of television would pave the way for bonafide trash tv first with the morton downey jr show and geraldo and then by 1991 they were joined by maury jerry springer montel williams and jenny jones among others if you've never experienced the joy of watching one of these shows congratulations this is some of what you're missing like a minute you want to wear a wig so you can get a lot better maybe [Applause] [Music] people in the early 90s just ate this stuff up and these shows came to be a big part of syndication lineups going into the early 90s these shows were intended for the early afternoon which was the spot that family feud most often landed in if a station couldn't find a spot for it in prime access so it provided a lot of competition especially since most of these shows had double feuds run time also around this time the company that syndicated the murrah griffin monolith was parading around a little show called inside edition a news magazine intended specifically for prime access which accompanied fellow newsmags like a current affair and hard copy to crowd things up even further all of this is to say that the world of television was ever evolving family feud was the hot item for most of its original run but times change wheel of fortune in jeopardy had and were retaining their thrown atop the syndication world proudly airing in prime access in most markets and the appetite for game shows outside of those two seemed to be pretty narrow both among audiences and stations as trashy talk shows came to dominate other time periods and reruns of off-network shows remained reliable choices an underperforming revival of a once dominant game show with a different look and a different host wasn't appealing to many stations before the end of family feud's first season back on the air nbc's flagship owned and operated station in new york had dropped the show in favor of inside edition in the rough and tumble world of broadcast syndication family feud had essentially one half of one season to become a hit if it wanted to have a prayer of long-term stability it did not achieve that and for most of the rest of its run it skated on thin ice but not being a runaway hit doesn't mean that the show wasn't popular the show found an audience that was respectable for what it was and though it didn't live up to the lofty expectations it performed decently enough to stick around in most of the markets it aired in and the cbs version was faring well too having built up a sizeable female audience there was even an episode of 227 which happens to be one of my favorite sitcoms that was geared around the main characters going on the show name the part of the newspaper that you read first oh michelle are you all right i'm fine ray as a host was generally well received even while he stood in the shadow of richard dawson if richard dawson was here the answer would have been all right and the fact that he no longer kissed the women was widely welcomed all in all the show's start while slightly underwhelming was good enough to get it renewed with the hope that it's adequate success would continue or even improve with time however that didn't really happen ratings slipped as the years went by even after ray donned a handheld microphone which was unique and brought his son onto the show dressed as robin by 1992 having fallen considerably in the day and in the evening and now really feeling the effects of tambloy talk shows cbs decided that the show needed work and quick so the show got a format change and these changes amounted to an overhaul the cbs version was expanded from 30 to 60 minutes and it was dubbed the family feud challenge the time expansion meant that a single episode would consist of two individual games with the idea being that the winner of the first game would go on to play the second game so that's simple enough but the rest of the changes were more complex and they're on full display in one of the strangest pilots i have ever seen one of the big gimmicks of this retooled version of the game was that there was no set grand prize the families would determine their prize based on their performance in the actual course of the game for the first game of the hour this came in the form of the bullseye round played at the top of the show rey goes to each family and drops two thousand dollars in their banks that being the least they could play for in fast money then rey goes to each member in each family and asks them a family feud survey question their goal is to give the number one answer which will deposit a thousand dollars in their bank for a maximum potential seven thousand dollar grand prize the number two answer would be worth five hundred dollars and the number three answer would be worth 250. this part of the game eats up about four or five minutes and by the end both families have their jackpot set and the main game is ready to begin and it proceeds just like you'd expect a bunch of rounds a winner declared fast money played and a lot of jumping once the family hits 200. but then instead of the credits rolling there's a commercial break welcome back now it's time for this family to play their second game against the current reigning champs but in this game there's no bullseye around at the front in fact there's nothing in these banks at all that's the twist to the second game the banks are built up during the main rounds the idea is that instead of the usual format where each main round is played for dollars with 300 being the threshold for a victory these dollars get thrown straight into your bank making up the amount you'd play for in fast money so instead of single double and triple value rounds the game went with rounds where each point would be worth 10 dollars 20 dollars and 30 dollars the bank was the score keeping mechanism in this game three regular rounds play out before we close out the game with the bullseye round yes the second game had an altered version of the bullseye round that was played at the back end of the game rey started by going to the trailing family asking each member a survey question but in this version of the bullseye round all that mattered was the number one answer which was worth three thousand dollars for each question for a maximum of fifteen thousand dollars on top of any winnings from the main game then ray went to the other family and did the same thing with graphics showing the amount they'll need to surpass in order to win the game whichever team ends up with the larger bank is the one that will play fast money which plays out as normal and that was the pilot for the family feud challenge this format change was drastic to the point of almost being unrecognizable as family feud these on-screen graphics tried to make sense of it all but they really ended up just being confusing this was no longer a show you could just turn on and immediately know what was going on instead it was hard to understand it was clunky and on top of everything else it didn't really make for a more compelling game this was a bizarre experiment and it is truly a marvel that these ideas made it all the way to the pilot stage before brighter minds prevailed that's right this pilot must not have played well at some point along the line because the version of the game that would actually go on the air in 1992 was more traditional it was still called the family feud challenge and still had the longer run time and the bullseye round but the format of the bullseye round was changed now instead of an individual question for each player on the set each for the same monetary value the game kicked off with five bullseye questions modeled as face-offs the value of these questions increments from a thousand dollars to two thousand dollars all the way to five thousand dollars for a potential maximum of fifteen thousand dollars if one family ran a clean sweep but the big difference here was that it added an element of suspense the threat was no longer just missing out on the money in your own bank it was also potentially allowing it to go to your opponent but unlike the last version the outcome of the bullseye rounds had no bearing on who won the main game just on the value of the prize for winning fast money this version of the game began airing on cbs in june of 1992. as for the syndicated version it was kept at a half hour but it incorporated the same style of bullseye round and it was renamed the new family feud this version of the show began airing a few months after the cbs version now in addition to the format change the show also dialed up its reliance on celebrity teams there were specials involving sitcom casts and wrestlers and football players and beauty pageant stars and on and on and on all in a throw everything at the wall effort to get more eyeballs on the show and the effort ultimately didn't work the bullseye round ate up five or six minutes per episode meaning that the main game and fast money had to move along very quickly to stay within their run time it was a pretty bloated change even in this revised form and i think youtuber g dollar sign 8605 summed it up best when he said quote bullseye was superfluous indubitably the increased reliance on celebrities didn't generate significant interest either and probably just came off as desperate to most audiences the show had hit all-time ratings lows for the 1992-1993 season to the point that only 62 percent of cbs stations were even carrying this season of the show and of course the downfall of the show wouldn't be complete without some sort of controversy between the host and the show's staff yet again howard felsher found himself butting heads with the show's star you see ray combs didn't really see himself as a game show host he saw himself as a comedian and family feud was just his vehicle to hire stardom he publicly made the comparison between where he was in his career and where johnny carson was while he was hosting who do you trust this didn't sit well with howard felcher who believed that the show came first the two pretty consistently squabbled with rey wanting to ramp up his comedic presence and howard wanting to maintain the integrity of the game the relationship might not have been as hostile as the one felsher had had with dawson but the bickering was prominent enough that neither man much like the other by this point in the show's run rey also lost his biggest cheerleader in december of 1992 when mark goodson passed away a pancreatic cancer at age 77. mark had been a loyal and vocal supporter of rey throughout the show's run so with him out of the picture that meant that someone else was going to have to take the reins of the company he left behind i wonder who it will be you've got mail ah yes mark goodson's son jonathan was put in charge of the company's operations jonathan was 47 when his father passed and he had worked with his father's company in legal roles and production roles for all of his adult life but the two men were different and decisions were about to start reflecting that meanwhile in november of 1992 cbs publicly announced that the current season of family feud would be the last one to air on the network the decision was twofold not only was family feud one of cbs's worst performing daytime shows but cbs also programmed an hour more of daytime than the other two networks and with the abundance of syndicated programming by this point stations were demanding that time to program their own shows rather than having to put on the network lineup so cbs made the move to return an hour's worth of date time to its affiliates completely dropping the 10 to 11 a.m hour that family feud aired in from their network schedule family feud's run in network daytime was over and the show would never return over in syndication things weren't much better the show barely cracked the 3.0 mark in ratings for the 92 season which this ad in a broadcasting magazine tried to spin as a positive also this number here implies that it might not have been much more than 50 of stations that kept family feud around for 93 but the show was renewed and would continue on for another season oddly enough this season opened with several weeks of shows shot outdoors on location at opryland in nashville using a completely different set and switching to an all digital board for the first time the whole gimmick was that several of the shows featured country music stars like brenda lee otherwise this season was largely just a continuation of the previous one with the bullseye round and celebrity specials and low ratings in fact ratings had dropped even lower by the beginning of the 93 season and the show's distributor told the show's crew that the show was going to be canceled the only thing that could make them change their minds would be some other change to the show that could be used to give the unhappy stations the confidence to sign on for another season and the solution they came up with will never cease to amaze me the big idea was that the show bring back richard dawson the rationale was simple dawson had hosted the show during its prime so he was the show's best shot at a comeback and while mark goodson might have sworn never to work with richard dawson again jonathan had not a lot of the staff on this iteration of family feud had worked on the dawson version as well and many expressed concern about a dawson comeback remembering the oversized ego and short temper that made the latter years of the show's run an utter nightmare but jonathan proceeded with the plot and brought richard in for a meeting where everyone immediately noticed that he had aged and put on a lot of weight this was apparently a consequence of quitting a four-pack a day smoking habit for his daughter and it was because of his daughter that he was even entertaining this idea of returning to host the feud in the first place his daughter had never seen him on stage because he had been in retirement since she had been born in 1990 and he thought it'd be fun to let her see what her father was really good at he just had to promise her that the only woman he would kiss would be her mother richard dawson signed on to host a season jonathan broke the news to rey who was blindsided everyone on the show was aware that cancellation was in the cards but rey had never considered that he'd be replaced much less by the man who preceded him jonathan did his best to convey that bringing dawson on was the only prayer the show had for survival but the news hurt regardless rey was getting fired from the job he had expected to be his ticket to stardom he took it personally and he was distraught he was essentially being told that he was the reason the show had failed it would hit anyone hard by the time rey's final episodes were taped he was aware of the impending change and if you pay attention you can catch some notes of anger induced self-pity and some of the remarks he makes toward his final episodes let's start by calling for the bullseye game then came his very last episode where the tran family won the game only to play one of the worst fast money games in the show's history with the second player amassing zero points prompting rey to say this you know i've done this show for six years and this could be the first time that i had a person that actually got no points and i think it's a damn fine way to go out i thought i was a loser till you walked up here you made me feel like a man give me your hand something that should be built to last you said that if you watch closely ray runs off the set instead of hanging around with the families prompting some confusion as it turned out he immediately left the building got in his car and drove off he did not say goodbye to anyone on staff thus ended ray combs's six-year tenure on family feud richard dawson's return to family feud was set to debut in the fall of 1994. the show wanted him to be a little more presentable and they actually included as a condition of his contract that he had to lose 30 pounds but when time for filming came he had not dropped an ounce oh well the show also got a visual facelift the set they went with was actually a modified version of the set they used at opryland with this cool stained blue glass look which turned red during fast money and to drive home the cool factor they changed the theme music to something considerably swankier [Music] [Applause] and the show permanently dropped the mechanical board in favor of an all-digital look which they cgied up for this version there were also some changes to the format of the show the biggest change was that for the first and only time the show was extended to an hour in syndication there would be two distinct games per episode similar to the hour-long cbs version there was also a gimmick where sometimes instead of the challenging family in the second half being the returning champions they would bring on some winners from dawson's original run the families in this run were reduced down to four members a piece and they were introduced at the top of the show using this weird caricature bit i don't know what they were thinking dawson was also a vocal opponent of the bullseye round and tried to get it cut from the show but the producers wanted to hang on to it so the compromise they settled on was a modified version called the bankroll round which operated largely in the same way except that the number of questions was cut from five to three and the same two players played all three questions these changes all amounted to far more than a simple host change this was basically an all-new version of the show with a throwback host it actually got some stations excited remember an extra half hour to a failing show was a tough ask so the fact that family feud actually held onto a decent lineup of stations was a testament to the power of the name richard dawson hopes were high once again the revamped version of the show debuted in september of 1994 whereupon dawson attracted a standing ovation and a notable ratings uptick probably mostly out of curiosity but the interest was fleeting and within the first couple of months the show was back in the readings catacombs for one thing dawson was a different man in 1994 than he was in 1976. he had been in retirement for almost 10 years during which time he had been totally out of practice his sharp wit had dulled and his knack for family banter that had made the original version of the show so popular was no longer what it once was on top of that perhaps as a consequence of his long time smoking his voice was softer and more raspy and he spoke in a hushed voice that occasionally made it hard to understand what he was even saying dawson just didn't have much personal motivation to make this show very good he didn't need the money he didn't need the clout he was really only there because he thought it'd be fun the show just didn't have the same energy of either version that preceded it and the hour-long format made the whole thing a long drawn-out experience without much that actually made it worth watching and the big thing that killed any chance this version of the show might have had was the oj trial the trial of the century which was going on around this time and got live coverage at every possible point quite frequently preempting family feud or just drawing away viewers in a lot of markets and the show was still up against all of the talk shows and news magazines that had given ray combs so much trouble ratings for the show were not good and the writing was on the wall for family feud the show was cancelled in syndication after a single season of dawson's comeback version there seems to have been some effort to look into renewing the show with yet more changes maybe even including a different host but those did not materialize family feud was over again in the aftermath of family feud dawson completely retired he only made a handful of public appearances in the following years he hosted a thanksgiving block on the game show network in 1996 he narrated a fox special called tv's funniest game shows and he appeared in interviews for gsn's game show awards in 2009. he taped an extended interview with a television academy in 2010 at age 78 reflecting on his life how would you like to be remembered richard [Music] alive and well i yeah that i was i was kind and i was a nice person you wouldn't want to move if you were sat next to me on the bus or maybe you would he passed away a year and a half later on june 2nd 2012 at age 79 from esophageal cancer his legacy in the present day especially in the post-metoo world is a little complex but his work on match game and family feud are undeniably some of the most iconic pieces of game show media in the history of the format his legacy also lives on in the wardrobe of columbia south carolina weatherman daniel bonds who actually acquired many of dawson's ties from his estate and wears them often on his weather casts now the rest of ray combs his life is a tragedy shortly after getting fired from family feud he was involved in a car accident that injured one of his spinal discs and though he did recover his general mobility was inhibited from that point on and he took medications to dull the constant pain from the injury the accident kept him away from his career for many months and by the time he was ready to come back he was unsuccessful in finding any work in comedy but then he entered a relationship with a company called seagull entertainment which was run by the same man formerly in charge of family feud's distribution in syndication the company syndicated a handful of programs mostly cartoons but the company had plans to launch a 60-minute raycombs talk show in the spring of there was a pilot taped and it was appearing in industry publications as late as february of 1995 trying to get stations to pick up the series at that point 44 stations had signed on and the show was set to clear 50 percent of the nation for some reason this project did not pan out and sometime shortly after this page was published the show was preemptively cancelled before it had a chance to air this brief clip with no sound is the only part of the pilot that has ever surfaced dejected at the failure of that project rey took the only work he could find which was hosting an obscure game show called family challenge on the family channel he actually managed to bring on gene wood who was the announcer for the entirety of family feud's existence to announce this new show as well in what would be his last full-time announcing job before his retirement this show was pretty juvenile many of the contestants were children and you can tell that the show was shooting more for that audience rey does his best appearing to genuinely try to make this show as good as it can be but he was working with limited material it was basically a nickelodeon caliber show and for a man who once had high hopes for a starry career in comedy it was demeaning work rey's personal life was full of turmoil as well his finances were in terrible shape due in part to his relentless generosity and in part to a series of bad investments in comedy clubs in cincinnati his ohio home was foreclosed on and he separated from his wife of 18 years though a divorce was never finalized by 1996 he had racked up over 250 000 in debt in addition to a nearly 500 000 mortgage on his home in california the combination of all of these factors the debt the breakup of his marriage the demeaning cable show the effects of his injury and the general failures of his career it all sent rey into a depressive state with friends noting changes in his personality around this time the issues came to a head in late may of 1996 when rey called his estranged wife to say his goodbyes before attempting to overdose on valium he was unsuccessful and he spent a brief amount of time in the hospital before being released though his wife noted erratic behavior from that point forward on june 1st he was reported to the police for causing a disturbance at his family's home in glendale he had repeatedly banged his head against a wall and was bleeding from his forehead he was again taken to the hospital and after his wife informed authorities of his earlier suicide attempt he was put on a 72-hour psychiatric watch but shortly after four o'clock the following morning rey hung himself with his bed sheets in the hospital room closet he was only 40 years old rey has been widely remembered as an exceptionally good and kind person by figures who worked with him on family feud as well as by contemporary comedians ray had a quality that you really had to look hard to see behind all the pizzazz and the show business jazz and the jokes and the laughs behind all of that there was a young man from cincinnati ohio with an enormous heart filled with love for people especially children and love for what he did i miss ray a lot and on the occasion of thanksgiving i realize i'm extremely thankful that i was able to know ray combs to work with him to laugh with him he was an important part of my life we want to close this special by showing you some clips of ray combs at his best which was usually the case on family feud [Music] this concludes part two of the story of family feud thank you so much for watching tune in for the final part part three where we'll take a look at the version of the show that is on today that's the one you all want to see right i will see you there goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Connor Higgins

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Id: BdfRwn71RHc

Length: 40min 37sec (2437 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021