Best TV Show March Madness Bracket Tournament 2012 – Elite 8 Round Voting Begins with Burn Notice, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, New Girl, Big Bang Theory, True Blood, Justified, and The Walking Dead All Facing Off

Features, Shows, Top Story

The fourth round voting has ended and one Cinderella show keeps on piling up the wins against top-ranked competition. The rest of the bracket looks about what was expected. There are 8 shows left. Let breakdown what happened in this past round.

The ABC Region has held true to form. The final matchup of this region will feature a #1 vs. #2 matchup. #1 Breaking Bad defeated #4 The Office by just 3 votes. A close call for sure. #2 The Big Bang Theory didn’t have much of a problem defeating #3 Parks and Recreation, though. Big Bang Theory had twice as many votes as Parks and Recreation. This leads to an interesting Cable show drama vs. CBS sitcom battle.

The final matchup of the FOX Region will also feature a #1 vs. #2 matchup. The results were also pretty similar. #1 Modern Family had an easy time with #4 Chuck winning with 71% of the vote, the most of any winner from this round. On the other hand, #2 New Girl won by just 4 votes over #3 Once Upon A Time. We are left with two major network sitcoms battling here.

The CBS Region was almost completely blown up. But it still doesn’t look like any of the other regions. Another top ranked show, #2 Dexter, has been eliminated. The unranked show, The Walking Dead, continued its Cinderella run by beating Dexter by 4 votes. In another close matchup, Criminal Minds almost made it a unranked final. But #5 Justified pulled out the victory by just 1 vote. So from this region only one seeded show is left, and it’s a #5 seed at that. A couple of cable channel dramas will now fight for their chance to make it to the Final Four.

The NBC Region also pretty much looks like you would expect. It will feature a #1 vs. #3 matchup in the final. #1 Burn Notice won with 62% of the vote against #4 How I Met Your Mother. #3 True Blood won the battle of the premium channel shows by 9 votes over the unranked Weeds. So that finally leads to a cable show drama vs. premium channel drama.

So out of the final 8 shows, 7 of them were ranked. Two matchups will feature the top seeds from those regions facing off. Another has a #1 vs. #3. Then, there is one region that features a couple of wildcard shows. If you really look at it, it’s pretty similar to what the real NCAA Basketball Tournament looks like this year. Just 5 dramas and 3 comedies left.

One last interesting thing to note. There is only 1 channel that has more than 1 show among the final 8 shows. If you would guess that channel, it probably would take about 8 guesses before you could get it right, though. Maybe more than that. The cable channel, AMC, is the only channel with 2 shows in the final 8. FOX, ABC, and CBS each have 1 show left. As does the USA Network, FX, and HBO.

If you don’t know what this is all about, go back to the First Round Voting Page, Second Round Voting Page, and Third Round Voting Page, Sweet 16 Round Voting Page and get all of the details there. If you did vote in the four rounds, you should already know, so go check out the updated bracket for yourself by going here:

2012 Inside Pulse Best Television Show Tournament Bracket

Now on with the matchups and let the extra long voting begin!


ABC Region – Elite 8 Round Matchup

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FOX Region – Elite 8 Round Matchup

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CBS Region – Elite 8 Round Matchup

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NBC Region – Elite 8 Round Matchup

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Each of these polls will stay open for 10 DAYS. Next week the next round begins and we will continue until the final show is crowed as the best some time around the middle of April. Remember to tell all of your friends to vote as well!

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!