A Real Laugh Clash

“America’s Funniest Home Videos” has returned for its ninth season on ABC with slick new sets, new hosts, a new 8 p.m. Monday time slot and something else: a determined rival on Fox trying hard to glom onto all that exquisite comedy churned from the nation’s 120 million camcorders.

“America’s Funniest” producers, who rolled out their made-over show on Jan. 5, have said goodbye to the droll Bob Saget, his ersatz living room set and his cartoonish voice-overs.

There are new hosts (John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes) and a pair of new writers (J. Elvis Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu, late of “Mystery Science Theater 3000”). Vin Di Bona, whose company produces the show with the Walt Disney Co., said that changing to try to reach a younger, hipper audience took a lot of work.

But what he didn’t plan on was the look-alike Fox show that emerged as a series last September. It has the old “America’s Funniest” 7 p.m. Sunday time slot, and some of the feel of Saget’s downbeat, straight-ahead format--built around avuncular “Fox NFL Sunday” anchor James Brown. It also has a title--”The World’s Funniest”--certain to snag channel surfers wondering where the ABC show went.

All of which leaves the usually sunny crew at “America’s Funniest” grinning through clenched teeth.

“There is tremendous confusion on the viewers’ part,” said co-executive producer Barbara Bernstein. “We’ve got a show that has been on at 7 o’clock Sunday nights for eight years, and when people see a very similar show, they are going to think it’s the same show.”

Maybe so, but viewers who send their tapes to the two shows will see a difference.

“America’s Funniest” flies four contestants to Hollywood to appear on each 30-minute program and hands out $10,000 to one of them for first prize--which also includes a chance at a $100,000 grand prize on the season finale. It awards $3,000 for second, $2,000 for third and $1,000 for fourth. But that’s all--the four dozen or so other contributors to each show don’t get a dime.

Meanwhile, “The World’s Funniest” pays $200 for each one of the dozen or so home videos it airs on each half-hour installment, plus $5,000 for the best of the bunch.

Those are choices that empower viewers. They can shoot for a big prize on Show No. 1 or take a better chance for a smaller check on Show No. 2 or even consider option No. 3: sending copies of their tapes to both shows.

“I’m sure they do that--it has happened on several occasions,” Bernstein admitted. “But most people are not that duplicitous.”

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Perhaps, but producers of the two shows admit they’ve been picking up the pace to spot and buy material.

“If we get a tape that another show also gets, we are going to go after it as aggressively and as quickly as possible,” Di Bona declared. He has a staff of screeners who watch 250 videocassettes a day that are mailed to his West Hollywood production offices by viewers hoping to beat 150-to-1 odds to make the telecast.

At Brad Lachman Productions in Burbank, about 100 cassettes arrive each day for “The World’s Funniest,” which devotes about one-third of its air time to home videos. For the rest, producers troll airwaves globally for TV and film outtakes, exotic commercials and hidden-camera pranks.

Lachman producer Garry Bormet admitted that he has lost out a couple of times when savvy viewers double-planted their submissions. Not long ago he received a tape showing an airboat soaring out of control at an Everglades wedding, sending the bride flying into the swamp.

“We went to clear it,” Bormet said, “and they said, ‘Sorry, that has already been submitted to another show and cleared.’ ”

The producers of both shows won’t give exact numbers of tapes they’ve lost in such a manner or of tapes that they suspect are double plants, but they say that viewers usually sign with the show that contacts them first.

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Both shows are used to receiving phony tapes--stunts staged to look like embarrassing miscues, as in an oft-telecast shot of a bride’s mother losing her skirt that gets caught in the car door as the couple drives away. Luckily, the producers say, those are easy to spot. One good tip-off is that people in faked tapes always grab their heads, elbows out, when feigning surprise.

“America’s Funniest” secures affidavits to ensure that its tapes aren’t fake. But not the Fox show.

“We put them on in a category, ‘You Be the Judge,’ and let the audience decide if they’re staged,” senior segment producer Peter Steen said. “If it’s funny enough, we’ll pay the $200.”

Both production crews regularly endure bouts with broadcast standards officials who draw firm lines: They always disallow loud claps of flatulence in quiet, crowded rooms, for one thing, and blot out certain body parts, for another.

But Christopher R. Cusack, co-executive producer of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” said he wishes viewers would impose some standards on themselves and stop sending him tapes of tiny faces painted on chins--shot upside down to look like a weird little creature talking--and big faces drawn on abdomens: two tricks that camcorder owners never seem to tire of and that belie the title of either show.