Brian Raftery reports that, despite having "long ago disappeared from pop-culture radar," America's Funniest Home Videos (AFV) still "averages more than 7 million viewers a week." How?
There are now simply more videos to choose from. After a few low years when submissions dropped to a trickle, these days the show is steadily getting about 2,000 clips a week. And in addition to direct submissions, producers also occasionally comb the web for breaking hits. The challenge, of course, is that by the time a great clip gets spotted by AFV, it may be too well-known. To deal with this, the producers have come up with their own YouTube barometer: If a video is starting to gain traction but has yet to hit 50,000 views, AFV will ask the uploader to take it off the web (or at least set it to private) and submit it to the show. Once it breaks the 50,000-view mark, however, Di Bona has little use for it.
The Dish 