A stock market site (honest!) has posted a list of the most popular game show hosts in history. The list seems designed to make members of the oldie boards throw up. The list even makes me laugh at some of the weird placements.
The problem is that the authors gauge "popularity" by page views of the hosts' Wikipedia entries over the past two years. Of course, this creates a strong bias toward the present day. Not to mention that the list contains a few names who are questionable as game show hosts in the first place. So Ellen Degeneres lands in the #1 slot while Bill Cullen gets shoved down to #38.
Game Show Forum will purely love such rankings. Even I think they're pretty goofy. Be that as it may, the site's list of the most popular game show hosts ever, from #1 to #50...
1. Ellen DeGeneres, 2. Alex Trebek, 3. Jamie Foxx, 4. Steve Harvey, 5. Pat Sajak, 6. Michael Strahan, 7. Johnny Carson, 8. Wayne Brady, 9. Ryan Seacrest, 10. Bob Barker, 11. Liza Koshy, 12. Drew Carey, 13. Howie Mandel, 14. Aisha Taylor, 15. Richard Dawson, 16. Jane Lynch, 17. Anthony Anderson, 18. Jill Wagner, 19. Regis Philbin, 20. Mario Lopez, 21. Chris Hardwick, 22. Groucho Marx, 23. Brooke Burns, 24. Allen Ludden, 25. Sherri Shepherd, 26. Dick Clark, 27. Chuck Woolery, 28. Gene Rayburn, 29. Jeff Foxworthy, 30. Bert Convy, 31. Meredith Vieira, 32. Ray Combs, 33. Melissa Peterman, 34. Hugh Downs, 35. Bob Eubanks, 36. Monty Hall, 37. Wink Martindale, 38. Bill Cullen, 39. Marc Summers, 40. Art Fleming, 41. Peter Marshall, 42. John Daly, 43. Garry Moore, 44. Jack Narz, 45. Hal March, 46. Bud Collyer, 47. Tom Kennedy, 48. Jim Lange, 49. Dennis James, 50. Jack Barry
This list is a hilarious example of how wrong you can go when you rely on a single metric. It's true that very minor celebs like Lisa Koshy and Aisha Taylor - the latter isn't even a game show host, by the way - have drawn more Wikipedia views in the last couple years than, say, Dick Clark or Bill Cullen. But my guess is that the overwhelming majority of Americans have only the foggiest idea (if any) of who Liza and Aisha are. It's ridiculous to call them "more popular" than Dick or Bill, who appeared on TV shows that drew enormous shares of the population compared to the tiny slivers of the viewing public that Liza or Aisha garnered.
At least the older hosts still draw a surprising number of Wikipedia views. Last-place Jack Barry got over sixty thousand views during the past two years. Anyway, it's a goofy list that's fun to laugh at. Enjoy the chortles.
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