Note to Jonathan: Talk about ignorant Americans! Can't you express yourself without using profanity? Your language use denegrates your whole point! You have a good message which could have been expressed in a different manner to not be so negative and would have been more meaningful.

While I agree that what we are seeing more and more is the "dumbing" of American, I do not think we should be surprised; the process is not limited to television. For years now, we have as a culture chosen simplicity over quality. We need only consider the success of popular fiction (everything from Stephen King to Daniel Steel) to see the wide-spread nature of the phenomenon. Why read King when one can read Cotzee? Why watch "Dancing with the Stars" when there are so many more intelligent and fulfilling things out there? However, after all that pretentiousness I have to admit that it comes down to taste. If the popular taste tends in a particular direction so be it. We ought be happy with simply enjoying what we enjoy (I realize the delicious irony of my own post here). To each his/her own!

Jonathan: While I don't appreciate your calling all of us(Americans) stupid, I agree that it appears that a large percentage of us are.

I, too, only watch Lost from this list. I also fail to see the point in 3 CSI shows, and 15 Law and Orders, and what-not.

But, I don't watch much television anymore. After X-Files jumped the shark in Season 5, I pretty much stopped watching TV.

Cardinals v. Tigers...yawn. Outside of Detroit and St Louis, no one cares.

nooo studio 60? Like Arrested Development before it, it shows the money is in the stupid programs for stupid people category, although I'm not putting Studio on anywhere near the same par as AD.

(altho on a poitive note, there's less reality tv than usual)

I'm gonna say this every week. This is an amazingly pathetic top 20! Out of the 20 there is only ONE show that i watch and that's Lost. The fact that TWO Dancing with the Retards show are in the top 5 tells me alot about stupid americans! And how many serialized show are there in the top 20? FOUR! You people make me sick, your love of everything 'easy to digest' like the quick 'one-episode-resolution' shows just prove that you all have the attention span of a dead goldfish!

Sorry i don't mean to put everyone in the same basket but this shit angers me so much! I ADORE watching TV and i watch ALOT of tv and thw fact that 97% of the shows i watch are not in the top 20 is quite sad i find! Am i not the demographic? 3/4 of what i watch now will be cancelled pretty soon because most americans don't like change. Who the fuck needs THREE CSI shows? and 2-3 Law and Orders? I can't wait till Dancing with the Stars finished so that there will at LEAST be two available spots in the top 20. But knowing you all it will probably be some other stupid shit.

Boy is ABC's Tuesday going to come crashing down when "Dancing With the Stars" is over a month from now.