Each day when I visit my health club, I watch game shows on GSN. For all of my life I have been a reasonably big fan of the game show format. I decided to write about some of the various game show hosts that come to mind, with a little comment about each of them.

I am borrowing the format from a website that I really like called The Book of Ratings. What this guy does is pick a category of something, write something about it, and then give letter grades. If you haven't seen this site, I'd really recommend it!

Disclaimer: This isn't meant to be any sort of definitive list. I am only writing about those hosts whom I have seen often in my lifetime. I am not foing to write about Groucho Marx or Bert Parks or the like because they were before my time.

If I happen to have misspelled any of the names in my list, please let me know in the "comments" section.

Grading the Game Show Hosts

Jim Lange: Jim Lange was probably best known for "The Dating Game". He came across as a happy-go-lucky, fun-loving guy. Not much bad you could say about him.

Outside of "Dating Game", he hosted a bunch of other shows of varying success. It seems that there was a time when there was a half-baked idea for a game show, the producers in game show land would "give it to Jim" to see what he could do with it.

One of my favorite of Jim's shorter-run shows was "The Million Dollar Chance of a Lifetime". I remember that there was a really interesting word game associated with that show. Grade: B-

Monty Hall: The host of "Let's Make a Deal" never seemed to be too big for the show. Monty let the games, the crazily-clad contestants, and the Zonks share the spotlight with himself.

Monty's moment to shine was always during the closing credits, when he would offer contestants money for miscellanea that they had on their person. Grade: C

Gene Rayburn: Gene was very good interacting with both the celebrities and the contestants on his show. My wife has mentioned that he is the most charming game show host that she has seen.

Gene gets points in my book for that skinny microphone, as well as covering for Richard Dawson once he got "too big for his britches." Grade: B+

Bob Barker: Bob has had a really long run as host of CBS's "Price is Right". His life-affirming presence most be good for everyone from students and teachers enjoying their summer vacations, to the dorm room crowd, to housewives, to retirees.

I always enjoy Bob's impatience with slow-to-bid contestants.

One of my favorite recent Bob moments was when a 90 year-old-plus contestant was taking forever to write down her guesses on a pricing game, Bob said in exasperation, "I don't care what she writes! Just give her the prize!" Grade: A

Chuck Woolery: I really like Chuck. He is friendly and humble. Of all the game show hosts, he seems to be the nicest to all of the contestants. (In reality, he's probably the exact opposite, but at least he comes off as being nice on television!) "Love Connection", "Scrabble" and "Lingo" would have been much less interesting with a different host.

Chuck's most memorable quality is his consistent flubbing of lines, and then laughing through them once he gets them right. It really helps to "humanize" him for the audience. Grade: B+

This is taking a bit longer than I had expected. I will finish this up later with comments on: Bob Eubanks, Ray Combs, Richard Dawson, Wink Martindale, Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak, Bert Convey, Jim Perry, and Dick Clark.