Inside Pulse TV Show Madness Bracket Tournament- First Round Voting Continues

It’s that time again! It’s the month of March and that could only mean one thing…time to drink green beer! Oh yeah, and it’s March Madness time! The biggest and most talked about tournament is the NCAA Basketball championship tournament. It kicked off first round action this past weekend, and by now most of your brackets have been completely destroyed and shredded. A select few might still be left in the running for all the money in your office pool, but for everyone else it’s time to start filling out a new bracket.

Everyone loves brackets. Four years ago, I picked out 32 television shows and had Inside Pulse readers vote on which show was the best one on TV. The top four seeds were Lost, 24, American Idol, and The Sopranos. In the end, the final four ended up being #1 – Lost, #2 – 24, #6 – Grey’s Anatomy, and #12 – My Name Is Earl. My Name Is Earl almost did the impossible and won, but lost out to 24 in the finals. Four years later, though, My Name Is Earl and The Sopranos are no longer on the air. You check out that bracket here.

A lot of things have changed since then. The real NCAA Basketball tournament appears to be expanding from 64 to 96 teams in the not too distant future. Many people don’t like that idea, including myself, but just picking out 32 teams this time around would be hard with the increased number of original shows on various networks including the “Big 5” and about 10 – 20 cable networks. So I have decided that 96 shows should be included in this year’s tournament.

Here is how the shows were selected. Back in early February, the staff unveiled their Top 10 Shows of 2009. I used all of their individual lists to create our overall Top 15 Shows of 2009 list. So for this tournament I started out using those rankings as a starting point for seeding and ranking these shows. But since the start of the year, Inside Pulse has hired about 10 more writers on the staff. So I asked them for the individual top 10 lists. It should be noted that, though, that any show that got cancelled or hasn’t aired any new episodes since the Fall of 2009 is not eligible. The ultimate goal is to decide what is the best television show on the air today? As long as a new season has started since the summer of 2009 or their our plans to start a new season this year, that show is eligible.

After all the individual top 10 lists were compiled and calculated, there were 22 shows that rose above the rest. There were all on at least 4 or 5 different lists and ranked high enough on each of those lists to rank high in the overall rankings. So those 22 shows automatically earned a bye into the second round of the tournament. But we still needed 10 more shows to receive a bye, so that there would be an even 64 shows facing off against each other in the first round and then face off in the second round with the 32 shows with an opening round bye. So since I couldn’t really see giving shows a bye that wasn’t ranked high by enough people, I looked to what shows people are watching the most each week. Using the Nielsen Ratings, I saw that there were 11 shows in the overall top 20 that weren’t among the previous 22 shows that our staff ranked high. But one show, Undercover Boss, is relatively new and the only reason it is in the top 20 for this season is because it got the coveted post-Super Bowl spot on CBS. So I decided that should be the show to leave out of the opening round bye. But I did give Undercover Boss the top spot outside of the top 32. The top 4 or 5 spots after them were also filled by shows that were in the top 20 for the 18-40 demographic, but weren’t already in our rankings.

So with all that background out of the way, it’s time to reveal the 96 shows that made it into this year’s best show tournament. Even with 96 shows, I’m sure there are still some of your favorites that didn’t make into the field. But among the opinions of 25 staffers with a variety of tastes, the majority of your favorites should be there. Take a look at the bracket yourself by going here:

2010 Inside Pulse Best Television Show Tournament Bracket

As you can see there are four different regions with 24 seeds each. 8 teams from each bracket have already gotten a bye as described above. That still leaves 8 different matchups from each region that need YOUR vote. So the time is now. Tell all your friends. We may have decided the rankings for these shows, but it’s up to YOU to VOTE for which show you think is the best on TV. Make sure to vote for all the matchups as every vote counts.


ABC Region – First Round Matchups

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FOX Region – First Round Matchups

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CBS Region – First Round Matchups

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NBC Region – First Round Matchups

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Each of these polls will stay open for one week. Next week the next round begins and we will continue until the final show is crowed as the best some time in May. Remember to tell all of your friends to vote as well!

Sir Linksalot: Television News

I'm not embarrassed to say that my favorite television show of all-time is The O.C. I live by the motto "you can't fight fate!" More importantly, I watch WAY too much television, but I do so for the benefit of everyone reading this now. So to my mom and my wife, I say thanks for reading! To everyone else that might stumble across this, remember TiVo should be your best friend!