Power Ranking the Family Feud Hosts

[Jeremy Nelson]

Now that we've had nearly 15 years(!) since anyone not named Steve Harvey has hosted Family Feud, how would you power rank the hosts? Has your opinion changed on how any of them hosted?

1. Richard Dawson- I just don't know how not to give him #1. Kissing aside, he was top notch at contestant interactions and knew how to spin a good wrong answer.

2. Ray Combs- Call me partial because he was the host I grew up on. But he's the one guy who struck a nice balance between being funny and lending the show tension when the game started to pick up.

3. Steve Harvey- I could make the argument that Seasons 1-2 of Steve's run were some of the best comedic work done on a game show. But when the show took off and the writers started feeding him questions designed to elicit a response (versus letting Steve just be funny) the quality suffered. He still has some great moments though.

4. Louie Anderson- Really wish that Louie didn't have his demons during this stage of his life cause when he was good, man he could be really good. Would have loved to see Baskets-era Louie Anderson host the show.

5. Richard Karn- In retrospect, I think Karn was a decent host. Didn't care for his catchphrases, but now that there's a lot of distance between him and this job, I can look objectively and say he had a good time and interacted well with his constestants. He's just not higher because the people above him were iconic.

6. John O Hurley- He was such a breath of fresh air versus Karn, but his hosting style always made me feel like he thought he was above hosting the show.

7. Al Roker- I didn't think he was bad, but the sample set is too small to say whether he was better than anyone else.

[Stackertosh]

Ray Combs: He was a lot of fun and was great with the contestant interactions, and I loved when he did the fake fast money.

Richard Dawson was a great host and was also funny, and he wanted the contestants to win. I hated the kissing part.

Louie Anderson: His version was the first time I watched the show, and I thought he was great for his first season and half, and after the second season, he looked like he was getting bored hosting the show and the whole blackmail thing was getting to him.

John O Hurley: I thought he did a great job as host and had some funny moments.

Steve Harvey I thought in the beginning he was funny and the show lacked a funny host for a while. Steve hosting got tiring after a while with his same lines and the show just feels rushed. (The same 20 second theme piece,No proper family introductions.) I just really think the show is stale.

Richard Karn: He wasn't a bad host. He did a good job moving the show along and did a great job interacting with the families. Richard wasn't a comedian, so when a funny moment happened, he tried to be funny, or he missed the mark.

Al Roker: I tied him with Richard Karn, He wasn't a bad host; he kept the show moving and did a great job interacting with the families; he was just corny, and there were moments he tried to be funny or missed the mark.

[BrandonFG]

1. Dawson, the OG. The kissing to me is only a bit creepy because he did it so much, but I can look at it thru the lens of it being a different era, and he had to get consent from contestants before the show. Even with the ego, he knew to let the contestants be the star and went to bat for them frequently.

2. Combs. This was the era I grew up on, and knowing he had big shoes to fill he knew to make the show its own. Really hate that depression led to him leaving this earth far too soon, because he was an underrated talent who deserved another shot outside of “Family Challenge”.

3. Harvey. Not a fan of the pointed questions designed to make a good YouTube clip because I’ve been a fan of Steve long before “Feud”. The few bloopers that seem to happen organically he handles it like a pro, which is why I don’t understand why the producers try to force moments to happen. This is the one show notorious for contestant bloopers.

4. Karn. The tosses to break were uninspired but he was the right host for the show at a time when it simply existed. In the mid-2000s, it was very much a thing on TV, which kinda says more about the state of television 20 years ago than it does his hosting style.

5. Anderson. I always liked him as a comedian but I felt like he was bored on some days.

6. O’Hurley. Ever since I read someone called it “Feud in the Park” I couldn’t unsee it. I liked the changes the show made like bringing back Bullseye and the traditional intros, but everything else about that era was mostly forgettable.

7. Roker. The NBC “Celebrity Feud” didn’t know what it wanted to be, so I don’t think I ever sat through a complete episode.

[BillCullen1]

Here's my take

1 Dawson - the original is the best in this case. He set the standard and for the first few years was at his best. Later in the run his ego became huge and he started arguing the judging of producer Howard Felscher. The scoring was changed to 400 points to win so Dawson would keep it moving and stop joking and chatting with contestants. The kissing seems creepy now, but overall he was a good host.

2 Combs - he inherited the task of taking a show made popular by someone else and putting his own stamp on it. He managed to do that successfully. Unfortunately, personal problems and his inner demons overtook him, and sadly he took his own life. Shame, but he did a decent job as host.

3 Harvey - he's had the job longer than anyone else. He gave a shot of adrenaline to the show the first couple of years. But how many times can you act shocked when someone says penis or vagina. The emphasis seems to be more on "Youtube moments" than the game itself. I rarely watch now.

4 O'Hurley - an improvement over Karn, whom he replaced. The "shocked look" at hearing the buzzer grew old, but he mostly kept the game moving and was a decent host.

5 Karn - an improvement over Anderson, whom he replaced. He was robotic and repeated the same phrases. But at least he acted like he wanted to be there. I thought he was okay as a host.

6 Anderson - oy vey! Originally my thought was "A comic who's use to being in front of an audience and thinking on his feet. This will work out great." Clearly it didn't. At times he looked disinterested like he would rather be elsewhere. During his first season, I sometimes couldn't understand him when he was reading a question. i also heard that during breaks and stopdowns, he would go offstage and not bother talking to the audience. That was left to announcer Burton Richardson. Even Dawson with his inflated ego talked to the audience.

I don't remember FF shows with Al Roker, so I can't comment on him.

[Caustic Window]

1. Richard Dawson - of course one of the all-time game show greats.    maybe the best ever at bantering with contestants so, this was the perfect vehicle for him

2. Ray Combs - it says a lot that he followed Richard Dawson, and he was not summarily rejected at all.  Very funny, very likeable, did all the host things like a pro.   A top-tier game show host by any measure.

3. John O'Hurley - ok, at this point it's a big drop-off from the top two.  That said, I did think O'Hurley was quite good.   Brought his own style to it, kept things fun. 

4. Steve Harvey - He's a very good comedian, and experienced TV personality.  I'm sure he has the chops to be #3, but this is such a bad incarnation of the show, he's hamstrung.

5. Richard Karn - Karn was just there.  He didn't do anything wrong, but didn't bring much to the table either.   To me, he's someone I'd put in the Gene Wood role rather than being the frontman.

6. Louie Anderson - Talented guy, but, as a game show host?  Yikes.  Just not the right type of vibe at all, and his humor didn't really translate.  Unpleasant is how I would describe his tenure. 

[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]

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.)

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]

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.

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.

[JasonA1]

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.)

I'd be pointing to a later host as an example, then, rather than a counterexample. I think it's clear Steve Harvey has an "it" factor with the audience that took the show to new heights after years of passable, but not exceptional performance. And I think Richard Dawson had something unique and undeniable that turned Feud from a good game show into a bonafide TV classic. Had one of the "regular" hosts of the '70s started with Feud instead, I'd be skeptical of it rising to the place it has in American culture. The other 1999-present hosts gave me lots of evidence that the format's strength alone probably wasn't enough.

For as much as we've stressed "the game is the star" and highlighting contestants, Dawson, and people like Gene Rayburn and Bob Barker, all respected their games and contestants, while also making themselves irreplaceable ingredients in the mix, IMO. And I think that also speaks to why the show took off with Steve Harvey.

Just to clarify, it's not the ranking I'm responding to -- it's the idea that Richard was "lucky."

-Jason

[TLEberle]

I had made the point privately that Feud starring Jack Narz would be a very different show and unlikely to become a juggernaut. I don't see a host playing up "we are going to put to the test the ability of our families to think like the average American of which we polled one hundred, and the family that does so best gets to play for $10,000 in Fast Money."  While of course we care about an intriguing game (and the steal ending carries a lot of that implication) the host has to inject his personality to be the driving force. For as much as I loathe Richard post 1984 or so, he shouldered the burden like a trained mule.