POLL UPDATE: TEN GREATEST TV SHOWS OF ALL-TIME! "M*A*S*H" PASSES "SEINFELD" AS NEWEST BALLOTS COME IN RIGHT BEFORE POSTING! STILL NEED MORE PEOPLE PARTICIPATING THOUGH!

While, I'm still a ways off from reaching my goal of getting 100 participants in my "TEN GREATEST TV SHOWS OF ALL-TIME" poll, I'm a lot closer than ever before. From begging friends to submit one ballot every couple weeks, I'm now getting, about handful or two, every time I post an update. Also, now, I'm getting a lot of last-second ballots as well, as news has quickly spread that I'm counting the latest ballots. (News spread by myself, but I'm good at spreading news, relatively anyway.) Anyway, it's starting to feel like, my dream of finding a "Sight & Sound"-style poll to find out the Ten Greatest TV Shows of All-Time" is starting to take shape. There's been a few rough spots. Three people have tried to pick "Saturday Night Live, Original cast only" or "SNL in the '70s".I appreciate the attempt, but the whole show in that case, gets counted. However, somebody tried to vote for every version of "The Twilight Zone" as one vote. That, I couldn't allow because they were three different series, unless he knocked off a couple other shows, and voted for them separately. Well, I'll go over any other rules clarifications as needed. In the meantime, here are the latest ballots that have been entered into the poll, and I want to personally thank them for participating as well as "AD's TV Critic" and "AD's You're the Critic" where many of the participants posted their ballots. Oh, and special thanks to Greg Taglienti for submitted his ballot, thanks Dad!

CHUCK REICHMUTH
1. Seinfeld
2. The Sopranos
3, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
4. Star Trek: The Next Generation
5. The Cosby Show
6. Deadwood
7. St. Elsewhere
8. All in the Family
9. The Twilight Zone ('59)
10. Game of Thrones

PALOMA SMITH
Seinfeld
The Newsroom
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
Angel ('99)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The X-Files
Medium
Blossom ('90 Series)
True Blood
All That

MEME ELAIHO ACHEBO
Boston Legal
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Mission: Impossible ('88)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
24
House, M.D.
Modern Family
30 Rock ('06)
Fringe
Moonlighting

TERRENCE O'FLAHERTY
Happy Days ('74)
The Rockford Files
M*A*S*H
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (aka The Wonderful World of Disney)
Nova
Cheers ('82)
Davey and Goliath
Star Trek ('66)
Speer Racer ('67)
Barney Miller

GREGORY J. TAGLIENTI
Soap
Dallas ('78)
M*A*S*H
Two and a Half Men
Cheers ('82)
The World at War
NYPD Blue
L.A. Law
All in the Family
Saturday Night Live

LAURA HUNT MANVILLE
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Law & Order
ER
24
M*A*S*H
60 Minutes
The Tonight Shows with Johnny Carson
Saturday Night Live
The Carol Burnett Show ('67)
Roseanne

TYREE HUNT
1. Columbo
2. Have Gun, Will Travel
3. The Jeffersons
4. Dallas ('78)
5. Perry Mason
6. Kojak ('73)
7. Mission: Impossible ('66)
8. Sanford and Son
9. Criminal Minds
10. All in the Family

CJ WILLIAMS
1. All in the Family
2. M*A*S*H
3. Crime Story ('86 TV Movie---> '86 Series)
4. 12 O'Clock High
5. The Time Tunnel ('66)
6. Dragnet ('67)
7. The Twilight Zone ('59)
8. Monty Python's Flying Circus
9. The Untouchables ('59)
10. Nip/Tuck

Well, this is interesting. A few days ago, I was prepared to talk about how "Seinfeld," which had been in the lead, for last two updates, was extending it's lead over everybody. But, a lot of ballots came in late, and suddenly, not only did one show catch up to, it passed "Seinfeld," and now, "M*A*S*H", is the new leader, with 9 total votes, one vote more than "Seinfeld. Right now, the top of the poll, looks like it's taking shape. There's six TV shows, with at least five votes each, "Seinfeld", "M*A*S*H", "Cheers", "All in the Family", "The Sopranos" and "The X-Files". After that, it's a clusterfuck. 9 different shows, have four votes, and 1,2,3... 9,10,11,... 18 shows, that have 3 votes, and 155 different TV shows, including two versions of "Mission: Impossible", and yes, there are two versions of "Mission: Impossible". Oh, and here's new twists, more people are submitting unranked ballots than ever before. Some of you know that the average rankings determines tiebreakers, but nothing else, (For ties, I take the average show ranking, with shows on unranked ballots I count them as having a #10 ranking) so there's no need to rank, but it's led to a few oddities. "Game of Thrones" for instance, one of the TV shows with four votes, has a 10 average ranking. It keeps showing up on unranked polls. Odd.

Well, for those new to this Poll, and what we're doing, this is about the sixth or seventh blogpost where I'll be talking about it, but here it is, again. This all started shortly after "Sight & Sound" magazine came out with their once-a-decade poll to name the Ten Greatest Movies of All-Time, some of you may remember this was the first time fifty years that "Citizen Kane" was beat for #1 by "Vertigo". (A decision I have strong opinions on, but I've written them somewhere else on this blog.) Anyway, when that poll started, it was about 60, 70 or so years after the invention of moving pictures, which is about how long, depending on how you want to count that television has been around. So, I thought it was time to come up with a poll to determine the "TEN GREATEST TV SHOWS OF ALL-TIME". Now, I'm not the first try to do something like this. People Magazine tried something similar earlier, but they separated by genres and gave us a limited amount of pre-selected shows to choose from. I didn't like those things, and I didn't like how other lists had been compiled either, for other reasons. So, I constructed this poll, to be done, under the same qualification that "Sight & Sound" uses. Well, not quite. They have critics and directors to do to participate in their polls. Well, I wouldn't mind having other critics and TV filmmakers participating in my poll, as well, but for the sake of, not having to try and contact about, 500,000 or so people who work regularly in television, most of whom, would surely reject participating in a poll conducted by a blog that gets about 2,500 hits a month. So it's open to everybody, although no anonymous ballots though. I publish all ballots, with the names, just like "Sight & Sound" does.

So, anyway, that's the origins of this project. Eventually I set a goal of getting at least 100 participants, which I think is not only a reasonable and achievable goal, but a large enough sample to make the poll, somewhat legitimate.

So, if you haven't participated yet, first of why haven't ya, and second, here's the rules of the poll, which are based on "Sight & Sound"'s rules for their poll.

Rule #1: As long as it originally aired on television, it's eligible for the poll, regardless of genre. This means that literally, everything is eligible for the poll. Sitcoms, reality, dramas, variety, talk shows, soap operas, news magazines, documentaries, TV movies, miniseries, cable, animation, children's shows, etc. If you want to vote for "The Joy of Painting", you're allowed to. As long as it originated on TV, it's eligible. (Now, I've a few questions about this, so just to be clear here, some shows might have been based off of an idea, in another medium, for instance, "M*A*S*H" was originally a movie, but then became a TV show. You're not allowed to vote for the movie, because it was originally shown in movie theatres, but you're allowed to vote for the show "M*A*S*H". Now if you wanted to vote for "Our Gang," that might not be allowed. Most of them, originally aired in movie theatres as short films. Same with most "Three Stooges", and Looney Tunes. So, with some things, be careful.)

Rule #2: You must select 10, and only 10 shows. No voting for 9, and no voting for 11.

Okay, that's it. Everybody can submit their ballot, by posting it in the comment section of the blog, or on my Facebook, either through messaging, me, or commenting on one of the links to my blog on facebook. You could also tweet me if you want, but I don't recommend it, but the blog's twitter is @DavidBaruffi_EV, just put that on your tweets, with your ballots. Might take more than one tweet, unless none of your show have more than seven characters in them, which would be odd, but not impossible. Or find, some other way to get ahold of me. Alright, 28 people have voted so far, that means I need 72 more to meet my quota, or else, I'm just gonna keep writing periodic updates until I get there. (Evil laugh) So, take some time, come up with your Top Ten, and submit them to the poll. Relax, it'll be fun, and you can pick any 10 shows you want!

Oh, and as for the "Dallas" clip, above. I just needed to post a video, and thought that since the great Larry Hagman recently passed away, I'd post one of the most famous moments in TV history, in honor of him, and television. Thought it was appropriate. Unfortunately, it's a moment where he's almost getting killed that's the most famous moment of his career, which is somewhat inappropriate, but.... It was a toss-up between or another clip of "M*A*S*H", so I picked that one. (I realized later tt I wasn't allowed to embed the video here, but so you can watch it on youtube.com, but not on the site. I hate when that happens.)