[6] America's Funniest Home Videos is based on the 1986–1992 Tokyo Broadcasting System variety program Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen TV (also known as Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan), which featured a segment in which viewers were invited to send in video clips from their home movies; ABC, which holds a 50% ownership share in the program, pays a royalty fee to TBS Holdings, Inc. for the use of the format (although the original parent show is no longer in production).

[11] Videos that feature staged accidents, people being seriously injured, the abuse of animals, or otherwise do not meet ABC network standards and practices are generally not accepted for broadcast.

[54] In the spring of 1989, while Di Bona and his then-wife, Gina, attended the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, the latter passed a booth for a distributor showcasing a segment from the TBS variety program Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen TV (or Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan), in which hosts Ken Shimura and Cha Kato presented and provided comedic narration over a package of funny caught-on-tape moments sent in by viewers; at the end of each show, audience members voted for their favorite clip among those featured.

[54][55] Di Bona, with Bellon's assistance in acquiring the clips from TBS, put together a presentation reel featuring footage from the Gokigen TV home video segment; ABC executives, immediately after seeing the reel (Di Bona has claimed in interviews that the network decided to buy the proposed show four minutes into the pitch), decided to place an order for the concept that would become America's Funniest Home Videos.

Di Bona enlisted most of the staff from Animal Crack-Ups—including among others, writer Todd Thicke (whose older brother, actor/host/songwriter Alan Thicke, hosted Crack-Ups in addition to his starring role in the ABC sitcom Growing Pains), producer Steve Paskay, creative consultant Gina Di Bona, coordinating producers Joe and (his son and business partner) Greg Bellon,[note 1] and director Ron de Moraes—to work on the pilot special.

Di Bona also borrowed the comedic narration style used in Gokigen TV and Wakuwaku, having the host provide voices to both humans and animals featured in the clips as well as exaggerated observational humor.

Los Angeles sports reporter Fred Roggin was also approached to host, but due to his contract negotiations with NBC (and its O&O station KNBC), he was unable to accept.

The clip, the Panasonic OmniMovie HQ 1FX8-CCD camcorder that Bill Wholf used to record the video, and other artifacts from the series—including an annotated pilot script, an audience voting machine, and a presentation reel created to pitch the proposed special to ABC executives—were donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in 2008.

[57][60][61][62][63] America's Funniest Home Videos became an unexpected hit for ABC: the special's initial broadcast was watched by 32.8 million viewers, roughly double the network's average viewership in the Sunday 8:00 p.m.

Ratings increased over the course of the show, with much of it coming from viewers in the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. snowed in by a significant blizzard that hit those regions a few days earlier around the Thanksgiving holiday.

He was replaced in 1995 by radio and television actor Gary Owens, who remained in that role until Saget's departure, although Anderson would briefly return via archived recordings.

This usually consisted of several actors in a fake room (usually in the upper part of the audience section or in another soundstage, the setting within it changing each episode) pretending to get excited to watch the show.

The success of AFHV—which regularly placed in the Nielsen Top 5 ratings during its first season (even temporarily unseating the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes as America's most-watched network television series in March 1990), and finished in fifth place among all network programs for the 1989–90 season—quickly led ABC to order a pilot for a spin-off: America's Funniest... Part II aired on May 13, 1990 as a half-hour special that was hosted by Saget's Full House co-star, Dave Coulier (who played Joey Gladstone on the sitcom); as was the case with AFHV following its debut special, ABC immediately picked up America's Funniest... Part II as a weekly series for its 1990–91 fall schedule.

The series focused on videos featuring people intentionally trying to be funny by doing celebrity impressions, committing pranks, and performing short amateur comedy routines, among other things.

Beginning with their respective fifth and fourth seasons in September 1993, ABC made America's Funniest Home Videos and America's Funniest People the lead-off programs of its Sunday prime time lineup, moving them both an hour earlier (to 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., respectively) to replace Life Goes On, which ended its four-season run that May; this also gave both shows a formidable rival in 60 Minutes, which had regularly beaten its 7:00 competitors in the ratings since CBS permanently moved the newsmagazine to Sundays in 1975.

[68] In May 1994, ABC canceled America's Funniest People after four seasons due to declining ratings, and decided to put the freshman sitcom On Our Own (a co-production of Miller-Boyett Productions and Warner Bros. Television, both of which were also behind Saget's other series, Full House) in its former timeslot for the 1994–95 fall schedule;[69] after On Our Own was put on hiatus that December following an initial run of 13 episodes (it would return as part of the Friday TGIF comedy lineup in March 1995 to complete its abbreviated 20-episode season), the network chose to expand America's Funniest Home Videos to one hour with back-to-back episodes, with that week's new episode occupying the first half-hour, followed by a repeat from a previous season to fill the remaining time.

[71] However, due to low ratings, ABC put the series on hiatus a few weeks after its debut,[72] before cancelling it outright after only one season and burning off the remaining episodes that summer.

Producer Di Bona held him to his contract, resulting in a frustrated Saget listlessly going through the motions, constantly getting out of character and making pointed remarks on the air during his last two seasons.

[80][81] Three new writers—among them, Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni J. Elvis Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu—joined holdover scribe Thicke (assigned the newly created role of supervising writer) on the writing staff, replacing Saget and Arnott.

Owens was succeeded by an unknown announcer, who was subsequently replaced for the tenth season by voice actor Jess Harnell, who still holds this position to this day.

A sports-themed special, AFV: The Sports Edition, hosted by ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, would later air on ABC in 2006 and was rebroadcast every New Year's Day along with occasional broadcasts before NBA playoff games (with a post 8:30 p.m.

In October 2000, ABC announced that America's Funniest Home Videos would return as a regular weekly series, ordering an eleventh season consisting of 13 episodes.

With ABC moving The Wonderful World of Disney to Saturdays for the 2003-04 season, in September 2003, the show returned to its former Sunday 7:00 p.m. Eastern timeslot, still in its hour-long format (though special episodes occasionally aired on Friday nights until 2007).

In 2009, in commemoration of its 20th season, the show started its "Funny Since 1989" campaign and broadcast a special 20th anniversary episode on November 29, featuring a guest appearance by Saget in his return to AFV for the first time since his 1997 departure.

[90] The series commemorated its silver anniversary for its 2014–15 season, and broadcast a 25th Anniversary Celebrity Celebration special on February 15, 2015, in which Bergeron and ABC sitcom stars Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross (both co-leads of Black-ish) and Cristela Alonzo (of Cristela) recounted memorable videos from the show's history, with one of three nominees from the pool being awarded a Disney Cruise Line vacation grand prize.

[91][92] On May 19, 2015, two days after Bergeron's final episode aired, ABC announced that Alfonso Ribeiro (known for his role as Carlton Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) would take over as host of America's Funniest Home Videos starting with its 26th season (premiering on October 11 of that year).

While some of the Bergeron-era clip segments, the in-studio audience and background parts of the Bergeron-era set props remained intact and/or continued into the first five years of Ribeiro's hosting tenure, the stage was updated to feature a metal floor layout and stairway connected to a puzzle-style cube screen composed of smaller sized flat-panel TV screens, while new segments (developed especially for Ribiero's run) were incorporated into the show.

[99][100] On June 11, 2021, the fourth offshoot of the franchise, America's Funniest Home Videos: Animal Edition, premiered on Nat Geo Wild (which ABC acquired through its 2019 purchase of most of 21st Century Fox’s assets).

On January 9, 2022, during the 32nd season (which premiered on October 3, 2021),[101][102] original host Bob Saget was found dead in his room at a Ritz Carlton hotel near Williamsburg, Florida, a day after his stand-up comedy performance in nearby Orlando.

Since the conversion to HD, the series features advisories to viewers to tilt their mobile devices horizontally when recording in order for clip submissions to fit 16:9 screens without reformatting.