The delay constraints imposed by future wireless applications require a suitable metricfor assessing their impact on the overall system performance. Since the classical Shannon's ergodic capacityfails to do so, the so-called effective rate was recently established as a rigorous alternative. While prior relevant works have improved our knowledge on the effective rate characterization of communication systems, an analytical framework encompassing several fading models of interest isnot yet available. In this paper, we pursue a detailed effective rate analysis of Nakagami-m, Ricianand generalized-K multiple-input single-output (MISO) fading channels by deriving new, analytical expressions for their exact effective rate. Moreover, we consider the asymptotically low and high signal-to-noise (SNR) regimes, for which tractable, closed-form effective rate expressions are presented. These results enable us to draw useful conclusions about the impact of system parameters on the effective rate of different MISO fading channels. All the theoretical expressions are validated via Monte-Carlo simulations.