'Fargo' | 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time | Rolling Stone
Not sure if it was posted before but RS ranked the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
My favorites seemed to be in the proper spots.
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It's a pretty good list, and like the top 100 from the recent TV (The Book), it's rightfully focused on stuff from the past century just as you would expect it to as the medium (like, say, video games) didn't really come into its own until fairly recently. Those old TV Guide lists were pretty laughable as they were full of so many older comedies. Hell, most people couldn't sit through an episode of I Love Lucy or All In The Family anymore, but those at least deserve to be on any Top 100 because of how groundbreaking they happen to be.
Only really shitty thing about the Rolling Stone list is that they had a side section for the Worst Shows of All Time and included Northern Exposure. Like, wtf? The granddaddy of all great dramedies and still probably the smartest hour long program to ever air on network television. It was fucking brilliant. Hell, FiveThirtyEight recently did a feature on the "most balanced" shows ever in the history of the Emmys (shows that excelled in all types of categories) and it scored in the top two (although they awarded #3, Mad Men, the title since it far outdrew the two above it in the number of nominations).
Personally, I think The Simpsons should always be #1 (for now) just as it was in TV (The Book). There is no comedy show in television history that has had a bigger impact on changing the game than that show. There's next to no great comedies from this century that can't trace a line back to that one in both the type of humor and the relentless amount of jokes that it brought to the table. Stuff like The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc. all deserve to be near the top, but there is no drama that comes even remotely close to influencing its genre the way The Simpsons has on its own.
And to answer the question about why it is still on the air, that's so friggin' easy. Young men. Young men. Young men. Young men. Young men are the most sought after demographic of all because they watch the least amount of television of anybody and it's been that way for decades, so when they find a show they like, they become loyal to a fault. The Simpsons. Family Guy. Sunny In Philadelphia. South Park. Literally all of those can't ever be canceled because so many of these male viewers are concentrated on such a small handful of programs. So you've got the most loyal audience and the most expensive to advertise for...a huge cash cow for the networks with a show of that magnitude.