As time wore on more and more lords, in an attempt to avoid the ever-increasing complications arising from interbreeding while still producing a blood lineage by which to carry on their family name, began to take mistresses from their serfdom. After nearly a century of this practice, the various fiefdoms scattered across Eurasia grew to contain large families who often clashed over their respective stakes in the land governed by the feudal lords. Years of bloodshed followed, in what can only be described as a great feudal civil war. Eventually, the feudal families decided that violence was clearly a poor means of resolution, and resolved that all claims would instead be decided in a court of merit - whichever family could most ably demonstrate that they possessed the greatest rapport with the general populace of a fiefdom was clearly the most qualified to rule. The judges presiding over the court formulated a list of questions they felt best exemplified the mindset of the serfdom, and conducted intense surveys of the indentured servants. The questions were then presented to the competing families, whose fate lay in their ability to produce answers that most accurately reflected the results found by the judges. This court became known as the Familiar Feudal Trial of Merit, later shortened to the Family Feud.
Around the turn of the 20th century, a young business man visiting colonial India, where feudalism and, by extension, the Family Feud were still an integral part of the culture, witnessed the ritual and was taken by the strange dichotomy of objectivism and populism. Upon his return to America, he began writing a moving memoir of the experience. However, he became ill and died before he could finish the manuscript, and it wasn't until 1976 that his granddaughter found his writings and presented them to the ABC television network in hopes that her grandfather's work could be used to produce a documentary based on his experiences. However, due to a clerical error, the manuscript ended up on the desk of the network's entertainment director, who had different ideas regarding the tale.
Family Feud premiered on ABC's daytime lineup on July 12, 1976 at 1:30 PM Eastern , with Richard Dawson as host and Gene Wood as announcer. Although it was not an immediate hit, ABC moved the series to 11:30 AM on April 25, 1977, where the series became a ratings winner and eventually surpassed the series it was spun off from, Match Game, to become the #1 game show in daytime.
A nighttime syndicated version of Family Feud debuted on local stations on September 19, 1977. As was the custom with many other syndicated game shows at the time, the nighttime Feud aired as a weekly series. In January 1979, midway through its second season, the syndicated version began airing twice weekly due to its popularity. The show continued to be such a solid hit that it expanded again to become a daily series, and Family Feud became the first game show to air ten episodes per week when the syndicated version's fourth season debuted in September of 1980.
Family Feud moved to 12:00 Noon on June 30, 1980, competing against another Goodson-Todman game show, Card Sharks on NBC after The $20,000 Pyramid was canceled, while reruns of The Love Boat filled the 11:00 AM hour. While most series that aired in that slot on various networks usually saw some large ratings drop, often due in part to local affiliates opting to air newscasts or more profitable syndicated programming, Family Feud saw its ratings remain consistent and for the next few years remained at or near the top of the daytime.
However, as 1984 began Family Feud began to slide in the ratings. In October of that year, ABC decided to move the veteran game back to its old 11:30 AM time slot, with the new Goodson show Trivia Trap as its lead in. The matter was not helped, as Family Feud continued to struggle in retaining viewers against another Goodson-Todman game show, The Price is Right on CBS. ABC eventually decided to cancel the long-running Feud, and its final episode aired on June 14, 1985 after nine seasons. The nighttime syndicated version followed it off the air on September 13, after eight seasons. Like its network counterpart, the syndicated Feud suffered from ratings problems for its last few years. The problems that plagued the syndicated Feud were a increasingly crowded game show market in syndication as well; it also did not help that the syndicated series had been supplanted as the most popular game show by Wheel of Fortune, which debuted in syndication in September 1983 and became an almost immediate hit along with its sister show Jeopardy!, which debuted a year later.
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