Most Influential TV Shows

This may be the one that started it all. Without Archie Bunker, there may not have been Al Bundy, Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin.

The Simpsons deserves credit for two reasons. First, it was the first animated TV show for adults, opening the door for Family Guy, Beavis and Butthead, South Park and others. Second, the Simpsons gave us Itchy and Scratchy - a show within a show with graphic yet cartoonish violence. Without Itchy and Scratchy, it's likely there would be no Happy Tree Friends or Postal.

Love it or hate it, Friends has been a huge influence on many shows. There are so many that range from Friends clones to shows that are headed in that direction.

Tom and Jerry is perhaps the best known of the chase cartoons. The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote started as a satire of chase cartoons. And can you imagine Itchy and Scratchy existing without Tom and Jerry?

I'm not really sure if Survivor was the first big "reality" show, but it seems to have opened the floodgates to the plague that is "reality" TV.

Poor New Jersey. First it has to put up with pollution jokes, ie. waste washing up on the shore. Then, ever since 2009, it has faced another kind of pollution.