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Power Ranking the Family Feud Hosts

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TimK2003:
I will take it one step further and rank at least three of the FF parody hosts (at least the three I can think of):

1) Dana Carvey as Ray Combs (SNL Dysfunctional Feud skit)
2) Kenan Thompson as Steve Harvey
3) Bill Murray as Richard Dawson (Coneheads Skit)

Kevin Prather:
Mine's gonna have some hot takes in it, so get ready.

(Note: I'm choosing not to rank Al Roker because 1: I haven't seen enough of his work, and 2: IIRC he only hosted with celebrities, never civilians.

1. Steve Harvey - Say whatever you will about the current product. Steve took a show that was not even on its last leg, but on its ass, and brought it back to the #1 spot, beating Wheel of Fortune for the first time in almost thirty years. He also took the format international, hosting the South African version.

Sure you could say that YouTube and the raunchy contestant answers had a lot to do with it, but give those same answers to Karn or O'Hurley, and they go nowhere.

2. Ray Combs - Ray Combs did something Richard Dawson never had to do, which was navigate the show through major format changes. Even when the show started to become almost unrecognizable, Combs conducted the proceedings beautifully. I think the way Combs was unceremoniously shown the door was tragic.

3. Richard Dawson - Being the OG always lends itself to a positive bias, but let's face it. He was in the right place at the right time. He did a great job, don't get me wrong, but this format probably would have gone to #1 at that time with just about anyone with any sort of comedic timing at the helm. Probably not Joe Namath.

(Note I said "at that time." Don't be pointing to later hosts as a counterexample.)

4. Richard Karn - Richard Karn basically went the whole show as a traffic cop. If anything particularly great happened, it wasn't because he made it happen.

5. John O'Hurley - Same exact critique as Richard Karn, but O'Hurley seemed to be playing a caricature of a game show host. He also left the show because he felt the questions were getting too risque, which we later found out would be part of the formula for the show's renewed success.

6. Louie Anderson - I'd really like to rank Season 1 Louie and Season 2 Louie separately. I'd rank Season 1 Louie above Karn, but by Season 2, it got to the point where you could just see that Louie would rather be anywhere else.

TLEberle:
Wondering about what criteria people are using--almost any host save for perhaps Richard and Louie have high and low points. Richard and Ray hosted for the greater part of a decade, and even John O' got four years out of it. Are you grading across the whole time, warts and all, or do you smooth out the hills and valleys? Personally I prefer Richard Karn's everyman to Steve Harvey's melodramatics, but early Steve outshines anyone save Richard D and Ray at their peaks.

(That is to say I don't think it is fair to grade the show as part of the host, but they seem inseparable, at least to this judge.)

Jeremy Nelson:

--- Quote from: TLEberle on September 26, 2024, 08:22:49 PM ---Wondering about what criteria people are using--almost any host save for perhaps Richard and Louie have high and low points. Richard and Ray hosted for the greater part of a decade, and even John O' got four years out of it. Are you grading across the whole time, warts and all, or do you smooth out the hills and valleys? Personally I prefer Richard Karn's everyman to Steve Harvey's melodramatics, but early Steve outshines anyone save Richard D and Ray at their peaks.

(That is to say I don't think it is fair to grade the show as part of the host, but they seem inseparable, at least to this judge.)

--- End quote ---

My two through lines:
1. How does the host navigate the game part of the show?
2. How does his humor improve/detract from the game?

Formats mean nothing to me for the purpose of this conversation because short of winning score and Bullseye, everyone's doing basically the same thing. If the host doesn't have an input on the thing, then I can't fairly judge him for it.

Joe Mello:

--- Quote from: Jeremy Nelson on September 26, 2024, 09:57:22 PM ---Formats mean nothing to me for the purpose of this conversation because short of winning score and Bullseye, everyone's doing basically the same thing. If the host doesn't have an input on the thing, then I can't fairly judge him for it.
--- End quote ---
A host may not have direct input, but I'm pretty sure a staff who is savvy enough will tweak a show to highlight its strengths. Steve Harvey may not be writing the surveys, but his success as a one-man react channel is undeniable, so it'd be silly not to play into that.

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