I'm sure people behind the scenes have their own opinion on the better host. I know someone that saw a taping with Louie Anderson hosting and he told me "he made a LOT of mistakes", so chances are a fair amount of editing was done to make Louie look better. I also know that Steve Harvey never tapes to time... similar to how Groucho would do a full hour show and it was edited down to a half hour. In the case of Steve, there's a lot of funny material to choose from, whereas with Louie, he tended to stumble a fair amount, and he was quite inconsistent. Some shows, he was quite funny and on a roll, and other shows, he looks very tired and wants to go home. One good thing I can say about Ray is that he was very consistent. You'd never know his struggles because when he did every show he was upbeat, happy, and enthusiastic. I also think Richard Karn was consistent, but not to his advantage. I can see why he was chosen... Richard Karn is a likeable guy and in terms of the game's mechanics, he knew it well, but he missed many opportunities to joke around when a bad answer was given. I also think that over time, he sort of became a caricature. His enthusiasm became more forced, and also, the set went from being a "Dawson inspired" earth tone set with browns, blues and yellow to a flashy discotheque. One thing about Dawson is that he never hid how he was feeling. We saw him upset, angry, frustrated, bored. I actually liked John O'Hurley. He brought charm to the show that it really needed, and he was quite funny. It also helped that they brought back the familiar Family Feud set and updated it for that time. For the first time I felt like I was watching a Feud that I grew up with.
