TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time: History and Key Facts

TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time is TV Guide's list of the 50 most entertaining or influential television series in American pop culture. It appeared in the May 4–10, 2002 issue of the magazine, which was the second in a series of six special issues commemorating TV Guide's 50th year (the others were "TV We'll Always Remember", "50 Greatest Covers", "50 Worst TV Shows of All Time", "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters" and "50 Sexiest Stars"). The list was also counted down in an ABC television special, TV Guide's 50 Best Shows of All Time, on May 13, 2002.

The 50 entries, chosen and ranked by the editors of TV Guide, consist of regularly scheduled series spanning more than half a century of television. TV movies, miniseries and specials were not eligible.

The TV special aired at 10pm EST/9pm CST and was viewed by 8.9 million homes, giving it a 6 rating and a 10 share. Considering the cover story for this special issue of TV Guide, it was the only one of the six issues to be presented on television.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.