I remember Mary Gross and everyone after her from watching the show. I’ve seen just about everyone on the list, though, from old tapes and re-runs and such.
Dennis Miller was the best. By far.
Colin Quinn makes me cringe. He was by far the worst. He mauls the delivery on just about every joke. The look on his face practically says, “Lorne, get me outta here. Give this job to someone else.”
I have always been a fan of SNL and reading wishbone’s list I am amazed because I have 0 memories of Charles Rocket, Gail Matthius, Brian Doyle-Murray, Mary Gross and Christopher Guest (in their anchor roles).
So of the ones I recall clearly my least favorite is Brad Hall. I liked Dennis Miller (yes, his egotism did grate sometimes) and give him credit for his longevity. I think everybody since him has been good. It almost goes without saying that I liked Chevy Chase, Jane Curtain, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray.
Either Colin Quinn, or the two bastards that do it now. I am leaning a bit more towards those bastards than Collin, cause I really hate them. Norm has always been my favorite. I think that was the best year(s) for SNL, when they had all those great people.
You need to update your list, wishbone, because Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey are doing Weekend Update this season.
Colin Quinn was horrible, I’ll give you that. But I really really hated Kevin Nealon, in just about everything he did. I guess I just didn’t find anything funny that Nealon evidently thought was funny. I can’t remember ever cracking a smile at him at all.
Christopher Guest was a pretty good anchor, but really only as a “reactor”; he was a great straight man at the news, but not so much a joke deliverer. But, he had some of the greatest guests ever when he read the news, such as Paul Harvey (Rich Hall), Dr. Jack Betoffsky (Tim Kazurinsky), Robert Lotta (the guy who just kinda wandered into places, Rich Hall again), Nathan Therm (Martin Short), Dwight McNamara (Gary Kroeger), Ann Landers and Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Mary Gross)… I can keep going forever.
Charles Rocket sucked, and for so many reasons they are difficult to list. It’s worth mentioning that he actually was a TV anchorman before he came to SNL. He still sucked. Come to think of it, that entire year of SNL sucked.
I believe that for years Dennis Miller was privately making fun of Rocket when he would loopily scratch out an item in his notes at the end of the news segment. This, I think, was originally Rocket’s “signature,” and I think Miller deliberately ripped it off. However, that’s just an opinion.
Norm McDonald cracks me up. Have ya’ll ever seen “Dirty Work”? And he did a good job on the news.
Were Rich Hall, Tim Kazurinsky, Gary Kroeger, and Mary Gross
on the cast with Christopher Guest?
At any rate, I think the cast right before the ‘superstar’
year of Guest, Martin Short, Billy Crystal et al. is really
underrated.
Robert Lotta was pretty funny. Dwight McNamara - was he the
voice behind the Coronet films? If not, that was a funny
bit on the news too…
How right you are. The new, revised list:
Chevy Chase (1975)
Jane Curtin (1976-1980)
Dan Aykroyd (1977-1978)
Bill Murray (1978-1980)
Charles Rocket (1980-1981)
Gail Matthius (1981)
Brian Doyle-Murray (1981-1982)
Mary Gross (1981-1982)
Brad Hall (1982-1983)
Christopher Guest (1984-1985)
Dennis Miller (1985-1991)
Kevin Nealon (1991-1994)
Norm MacDonald (1995-1997)
Colin Quinn (1998-2000)
Jimmy Fallon & Tina Fey (2001-present)
BTW, why is it that they never show any of the shows from 1980-1985 on Comedy Central? Are they that bad?
The man with six fingers on one of his hands was on SNL? Damn, I never knew that…
Anyway, I’ve only seen WU since Kevin Nealon was on and my list goes from most to least favorite:
Colin is just horrible, so damn horrible.
Kevin Nealon sucked rocks. And Quinn blows baby seals. Norm was a master. He would tell the STUPIDEST jokes.
I like Kevin Nealon. His delivery was many times rushed or ill-timed, but his jokes were funny. I was in the audience a couple of months ago of a new show he may host (if it gets picked up) and he was funny, fast on his feet and very intelligent.
By they way, is anyone doing a trend analysis of this topic? I think every single anchor has had at least one best and one worst vote. 
wishbone:
I don’t think it’s directly an issue of the quality of the shows.
Lorne Michaels created the show and helmed it from 1974-1980, then left. The remaining original cast left with him.
Lorne was replaced by his assistant producer, Jean Doumanian. She assembled the next cast, which included Charles Rocket, Joe Piscopo, Denny Dillon, Eddie Murphy, Gilbert Gottfried and several others. This first non-Lorne season was so atrocious the show was taken off the air after half a season. It reached its nadir when Rocket deliberately said “fuck” on the air near the end of an episode. Doumanian was fired.
She was replaced by Dick Ebersol, who fired the whole cast except for Piscopo and Murphy, hired a new cast, and produced the last half of that season and each subsequent season until he left in 1985.
He was replaced by Lorne Michaels, who agreed to come back to the show only when NBC told him they’d cancel it if he didn’t. He then hired the “super cast” that included Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Harry Shearer etc.
So, to answer your question with a guess, Comedy Central probably worked the rights to the reruns with Lorne, who probably only controls the syndication rights to the shows he produced himself.
The Dick Ebersol years get slammed pretty consistently, and they weren’t all that great (personally I’ve never found Joe Piscopo the least bit funny), but they still stand head and shoulders above many of Lorne’s seasons since he returned to the show.
Comedy Central must have at least the rights to SOME shows from the 1980-85 seasons, because only a few weeks ago I saw reruns of episodes from, I believe, the 1984 season, hosted by Ringo Starr and Roy Scheider. Strangely, both episodes I saw aired at 2 AM; I guess they’re still not ready for prime time.
It seems, though that we’ll never again see episodes from the “lost season” of SNL (1985), because the show was really, really bad that year. I don’t remember the full cast, but it included Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, Joan Cusack, Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeny (did he EVER do a sketch not in drag?), and Damon Wayans. Even though the show generally sucked, it’s a pity they don’t show reruns, because every now and then a sketch turned out to be pretty darn funny, such as the game show “You Bet Your Finger” (on which the guillotine kept malfunctioning. “What do you think the problem is, Brian?” “Looks like gravity, Bob.”) and the panel talk show “You Can Pick Your Friends, You Can Pick Your Nose, But You Can’t Pick Your Friends’ Noses”.
Not to mention “The Limits Of The Imagination!”
First…Wishbone…Yes, the early 80s were undoubtedly the worst SNL seasons to date. Absolutely attrocious.
Second, I’m sticking up for Norm MacDonald…that guy is hilarious. He’s one of my favorite anchors, and Dirty Work is a hilarious movie. (REALLY stupid…but hilarious).
And finally…the worst SNL anchor?? Colin Quinn by far. His only “jokes” consisted of 2 minute rants about nothing, during which he would stumble over his words, thereby further confusing the already dumbfounded viewers. He was never funny in sketches either!
The smarmy and untalented Norm MacDonald…I couldn’t watch more then ten seconds of him without disinfecting myself…at least Dennis Miller had sarcasm on his side.
Oh, you just HAD to go and put that in my head didn’t you? Okay, here’s an approximate count of the positive and negative votes thus far. Some of them are fairly subjective; your tally may vary.
POSITIVE NEGATIVE
Chevy Chase (1975) 2
Jane Curtin (1976-1980) 2
Dan Aykroyd (1977-1978) 1
Bill Murray (1978-1980) 1
Charles Rocket (1980-1981) 2
Gail Matthius (1981)
Brian Doyle-Murray (1981-1982) 1
Mary Gross (1981-1982) 1
Brad Hall (1982-1983) 2
Christopher Guest (1984-1985) 1
Dennis Miller (1985-1991) 2 2
Kevin Nealon (1991-1994) 2 5
Norm MacDonald (1995-1997) 5 4
Colin Quinn (1998-2000) 1 *13!*
J. Fallon & T. Fey (2001-prs.) 2 1
For my $1/50, I’d have to put Dennis on top and Norm on the bottom… which you’d have to add to the above totals… [sub]oh, just never mind…[/sub]
Kevin Nealon, although he started off very rocky, I think improved over his tenure. Kind of odd, that people who make a living off being practically spontaneous in a skit milieu should have so much trouble starting into a teleprompter and delivering news smoothly.
-Dave
I think Norm is by far the best anchor WU has had. Colin was bad, I still enjoyed the bit. The two they have now are absolutely awful. Well…Tina Fey isn’t bad, but Jimmy Fallon is terrible. Bring Norm back!
Wow!, I musta missed that show.
Dennis Miller the worst. at everything, not just newscasting. unfunny. unfunny. unfunny. and lame.
Norm McDonald by far the best, beating out even the venerable Chevy Chase
I wonder if for Norm McDonald there’s a certain age group that just gets him and really enjoy his style. Personally myself I always found him to be grateing. He always seemed to me that he was trying to emulate David Letterman. Where he’d read a short news blurb. Look into the camera and repeat the last part louder. Colin Quinn kind of did the same thing. Made me thing, jeez I might as well watch CNN, it’s on all the time and I get integrity too.
But I really enjoyed Dennis Miller and Kevin Nealon. Dennis because he did have attitude and it just clicked with me. Plus it probably helped that I was 16 when he was on. And Kevin was just surreal, kind of like a Monty Python news team. He had a kind of “and now for something completely different” attitude. And they made the news really entertaining. They’d show a photo and just tell this outlandish story about Bush kissing Gorby or something like that.
As per all the other news anchors I can’t really recall all that much that stands out. Except some of the Chevy Chase stuff. As for the 85 season I have seen several of them on, like the Back to the Future parody. I think CC just cycles through them very very slowly. I remember several years ago they played some from like 81 or 82. What always made me sad was that from the first several seasons they only play a 1/2 hour best of the show.
As per the news guest I always loved “The Big Picture.” And don’t forget the Russian woman who had dancing boobs almost 20 years before Britney had em.