America’s Funniest Home Videos will continue featuring tributes to the late Bob Saget for the rest of the season. Saget was the first host for the series, which launched back in 1989, after Saget became a household name thanks to Full House. AFV‘s first tribute to Safet aired during its Jan. 16 episode, just days after his death. Saget died on Jan. 9 in Orlando. He was 65.
AFV producer Vin Di Bona decided that one tribute to the host who helped make the show an American institution was not enough. He told Variety there was plenty of content from Saget’s eight-year run to include on the show. AFV is now in its 32nd season and hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro.
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“I’d forgotten how whimsical and crazy his host bits were – very physical and very visual,” Di Bona told Variety Saturday. “In one show he walks on stage in front of the audience and says ‘Did I tell you it’s my birthday?’ And the audience all raises their hands with wrapped gifts for him. It’s that kind of gentle crazy humor that I want younger generations to see from him.”
AFV launched as a special in November 1989, with Saget as host. When ABC ordered the first season, Saget was brought back in. He hosted the show until 1997 and helped establish it as the anchor of ABC’s Sunday night line-up, where it has been airing ever since. Di Bona capitalized on mixing Saget’s “TV dad” image from Full House with a PG-rated version of his edgy stand-up comedy to make AFV much more than just a compilation of people doing silly things at home.
“Bob was most proud of his voiceover work,” Di Bona told Variety. “We spend endless hours in voiceover sessions perfecting how Bob would do that. Oftentimes he would be three to four characters in a clip. That meant tracking three to four channels of voiceover to mix together. It was hysterical and it was exhausting. And in the end, it was funny.”
The Saget segments will be featured in the last 12 episodes of the 2021-2022 season with “AFV Remembers the Saget Years” chyron atop the clips. Each segment will include a montage of Saget’s best moments. “As the rabbi said at the opening of Bob’s (memorial) ceremony, ‘He could be a handful, and he was delightful, and he was a wonderful human being,” Di Bona said.
Saget was found dead in his hotel room in Orlando, just hours after performing near Jacksonville, Florida. He is survived by his second wife, Kelly Rizzo, and his three daughters with first wife Sherri Kramer, Aubrey, Jennifer, and Lara.
