No Wonder Years?

No shows starting with the letter N?

Gilligan got screwed again.

Love
24
All in the Family
American Idol
The Carol Burnett Show
A Charlie Brown Christmas - Still, wtf?
Friends
Hill Street Blues
Homicide: Life on the Street
I Love Lucy
The Larry Sanders Show
Late Night with David Letterman (NBC - definitely this version only)
Lost
M*A*S*H
The Price Is Right
Roseanne
Seinfeld
Sesame Street
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Sopranos
South Park


Like a lot
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The Cosby Show
Deadwood
Married... With Children
MTV 1981-1992 - When they still showed videos.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Saturday Night Live
Star Trek
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson


Like okay
The Abbott and Costello Show
The Beavis and Butt-Head Show
Cheers
The Monkees - Would've been Love if you asked me when I was 8.
The Odd Couple
Sex and the City
Soap
St. Elsewhere
Taxi
The Twilight Zone


Tolerate
60 Minutes
ABC's Wide World of Sports
The Day After
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Moonlighting
The Super Bowl (and the Ads)
WKRP in Cincinnati


Don't like
Arrested Development
The Bob Newhart Show
Buffalo Bill
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dallas
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Gilmore Girls
Gunsmoke
King of the Hill
Rocky and His Friends
Sanford and Son
Twin Peaks
The West Wing


Hate
The Daily Show
Dragnet
General Hospital
The Honeymooners
Leave It to Beaver
The Office [American]
The Oprah Winfrey Show
Pee Wee's Playhouse


Never saw
An American Family
Battlestar Galactica
Brideshead Revisited
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ernie Kovacs Show
Felicity
Freaks and Geeks
The French Chef
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
I, Claudius
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Monty Python's Flying Circus
My So-Called Life
The Office [British]
Playhouse 90
Prime Suspect
The Prisoner
The Real World
Roots
Second City Television
See It Now
The Singing Detective
Six Feet Under
SpongeBob SquarePants
SportsCenter
Survivor
What's My Line?
The Wire
Wiseguy
The X-Files
Your Show of Shows

whew X-files was there.

No Hardcastle & McCormick, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Jake & The Fatman, Cagney & Lacey, or Simon & Simon?!!


Oh wait, they were all the same show...

What a weird list! Too much on it doesn't really count as being a "show".

As for omissions, they left off ROME which (IMO) is the best show HBO has ever done.

I loved that show MTV 1981-1992 .

The biggest ommission I see (or don't see) is Family Ties.

Has there ever been a thread here about a "Best of" or "Top" list, that didn't resort to "What no *fill in random show here*!?"? We are so predictable .

Any list that has Charlie Brown on it is cool with me.

No Meet the Press? It's been going on for 60+ years and some one shot shows and mini series make it? Not that Meet the Press is riveting must see TV, but it's a giant in it's field.

No OZ, no Curb Your Enthusiasm, no Sports Night makes me angry...BUT horray for Deadwood, Beavis & Butthead, and King of The Hill!

to (even though a few, like 24 don't belong on a list like this)

Where the hell are Sports Night and The Wonder Years?

Quantum Leap?

I agree - No ROME = irrelevant list.

I'm disappointed that so many thought ESPN SportsCenter don't belong on this list.

This program changed sports in many ways:

1) You now have a single program to get all the sports highlights for all the games from the major sports leagues.

2) It changed the how many sports were played, with a LOT more emphasis "highlight plays" like touchdowns and long runs/punt returns/kick returns in football, dunks and three-point shots in basketball, home runs and exciting catches in baseball, long slap shots in hockey, etc. In a morbid way, it may have contributed to the performance-enhancing drug problem in professional sports because of the emphasis on highlights.

3) It killed off a lot of local sports TV reporting on local TV channels.

From the late 1980's on, ESPN has come closest to the old ABC Sports motto, The Worldwide Leader in Sports. There are probably only a few networks in Europe that could compare in terms of all-out sports coverage.

Wrong. Love it or hate it, AI revolutionized that genre of TV and is a ratings powerhouse. It was number one basically every single week of it's airing for six years. That's amazing. Definitely deserves a place.

This is a "100 Best" list, not a "100 Most Successful" list.

No that would be 'Carnivàle' which is also missing

The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer?

How dare you make me remember that show!

So many spot-on comments in this thread regarding omissions/inclusions. One thing is for certain: Any "Best" List is guaranteed to generate controversy, since by definition "Best" is highly subjective.

Having said that, it seems that some rather distinct biases stand out on the part of the selectors, who seem to place a heavy emphasis on contemporary shows, sitcoms, & "trendy" shows that appeal to younger audiences ("The Real World"!?!?). If the list had been titled, "The 100 Most Influential Shows", it might have been more appropriate.

As others have pointed out, "successful" does not always mean "highest quality". Although I like MOST of these shows (even some which I don't feel deserve to be included), there are some glaring omissions. "Married With Children", "Beavis & Butthead", & "Friends" better than Andy Griffith or The Wonder Years? "Battlestar Galactica" better than "Angel"? "Felicity" better than "Christy", "ER", or "The Waltons"? "24" better than "The Avengers" or "I Spy"? "Lost" & "The Real World" better than "Big Love" or "Rome"? Where are "Combat" and "Band of Brothers"? Rumpole, Jewel in the Crown, & Upstairs, Downstairs? As far as miniseries, how about "Traffik" (which spawned both movie & a miniseries remakes)?

Other highly questionable selections: The Monkees & Sanford and Son ( both fun but repetitive), Wiseguy (a couple of great story arcs followed by a sharp decline), Dallas (dated), American Idol & Survivor (high concept but hostage to the participants, which makes the season quality vary wildly).

It might help to know the criteria used for selection. From the choices, it's hard to tell if the shows were picked for influence (if so, Miami Vice should have been included), popularity (where's Beverly Hillbillies?), or quality (missing Joan of Arcadia, Veronica Mars, Combat!, The Fugitive, etc.). Maybe there was an agenda to cover all the bases (variety shows, talk shows, dramas, comedies, sci-fi, reality, cop, lawyer, doctor, soaps, etc. Or maybe the answer to the criteria question is "All of the Above".

Obviously, the selectors don't like westerns, since they ignored superbly written and acted shows such as Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, & Bonanza. Sure, some of those shows started declining with age (especially the last two), but they were churning out numerous episodes per year (Gunsmoke & HGWT had around 39 episodes per early season). The sheer pace & volume of the programs produced was staggering, and it amazes me that the quality could be maintained for so long. It's my belief that most shows only have 6-7 really good years in them (long-running shows on the list such as M*A*S*H*, Seinfeld, All in the Family, etc. experienced the same growing pains and/or later decline as The Waltons, Bonanza, and others that had outstanding 5-6 year runs before falling into formulaic ruts). Could "Buffalo Bill" or "Freaks & Geeks" have sustained long runs without falling prey to recycled plots?

Even some of the older classics selected seem based more upon reputation than actual timeless quality. For instance, "I Love Lucy" can wear thin pretty rapidly due to its reliance on the old "Lucy gets herself in hot water this week & tries to avoid having Ricky find out" gig. In contrast, the omitted Andy Griffith Show (during the "Barney" years) kept coming up with fresh gags & memorable characters within the confines of Mayberry (defying those who think a contemporary program must be set in "the big city" to come up with enough conflicts to keep things entertaining).

It also seems that "edgy" or "provocative" shows were rewarded (South Park, Married With Children, etc.) in contrast to "safe" or "conservative" shows (Little House, Waltons, Avonlea) which nonetheless were produced with much care & quality for a number of seasons. I mean, if one wants to single out high quality shows that broke new ground, why not choose "Frank's Place" or "The Days & Nights of Molly Dodd"??

These lists will keep being compiled & will always bring out the passion in lovers of great television & will always invite arguments. Still, it does pretty much wreck the credibility of the list when a timeless classic such as Andy Griffith is left off. There is no defense for that...even someone who "doesn't like the show" ought to recognize its quality. And, after all, that's what this list is supposed to be about...isn't it?

Isn't that kind of the point in posting the list in a discussion forum? So we can discuss it?

First of all AI revolutionized a genre that is single handedly ruining primetime television & second, just because it’s a ratings powerhouse doesn’t mean it’s a good show.
St. Elsewhere, Hill Streets Blues & Homicide: Life on the Street are three of best dramas in the history of television & 2 of them (St. Elsewhere & Hill Street Blues) set the standard for other great dramas such as ER, NYPD: Blue, The Shield & even Homicide: Life on the Street.
St. Elsewhere & Hill Street blues were never ratings hits & St. Elsewhere barely stayed on the air for its 6 season run. Hill Street Blues was in the same camp. Homicide as well didn’t do strait out fantastic in the rating either.
Some shows like Seinfeld, Cheers, M*A*S*H, etc… became ratings juggernauts but in all of they’re first seasons, they got extremely low ratings & were in danger of getting cancelled. Thankfully the audience caught on that they were great shows but a lot of shows like Newsradio, etc... didn’t catch on with a major audience.

Ratings mean nothing in terms of the quality of the TV show.

Hell, The Larry Sanders Show is one of the all-time greats & HBO couldn't ever figure out how many people were watching the show.

Taking a second look at this list, there are definitely some shows that deserve to be there, but their odd choices of including things like Super Bowl (not a specific SB, but all?), ten years of MTV (basically inlcuded a network?), The Charlie Brown special (one shot), and a few others makes the list kind of a joke in my mind.

Love the way they screwed Jay Leno by specifying The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Plain ridiculous. Even assuming you are right about HIGHLY rated shows, you are very wrong about LOW rated shows. There's a reason several of the shows you mentioned were not highly rated - because they weren't any good. Cult does not equal "good".

I hate reality TV too, but do watch AI and will American Band. If you think that reality is ruining TV you are sorely mistaken. The lack of innovative and compelling new shows is doing that. For every BSG there are countless others that just suck.

What's REALLY ruining TV is networks not allowing a show to develop a voice and an audience by canceling it after 2 episodes.

Well the list was chosen by one guy and if you really want to know how he made his choices, the article includes a section entitled; "How I Chose The List". He admits it is HIS list and expects many disagreements. I certainly disagree with many of his selections. If anyone missed it, there is a link to the article in the first post.