2009 was a big year for American Idol. After airing for seven wildly successful seasons with three judges, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, producers decided to throw a fourth judge into the mix, bringing songwriter Kara DioGuardi on board for season eight. It was a controversial move, and to the surprise of very few people, it went ... poorly.

The judges, who had spent seven seasons learning the rhythm of the show, were suddenly forced to contend with a fourth voice. As none of these folks were exactly shrinking violets to begin with, this led to a lot of jockeying for the mic, which in turn wasted a lot of time. It wasted so much time, in fact, that critiques would get cut off, the show would run long, and at times, judges wouldn't be allowed to speak at all.

So at the end of this harried season, it was no surprise that someone would be shown the door. Many thought that it would be newbie judge Kara DioGuardi. Instead, it was Paula Abdul who was given the boot, and replaced by music legend ... Ellen DeGeneres?

It's too easy to call Jon and Kate Plus 8 a train wreck and leave it at that.

If ever there was a cautionary tale about the perils of easy fame, this is it. In the course of a year, we watched Jon and Kate
go from a benignly dysfunctional reality TV family to a textbook case of what happens to "normal" people under the glare of TV lights. The Gosselins seemed to lose themselves completely in the glare of the spotlight and jettisoned their values and morals for more camera time. Calling their story a "train wreck" doesn't even begin to surmise the dissolution of a family and the viewing public's fascination with its implosion.

As 2009 draws to a close, the world has exactly what it needs -- another massive media conglomerate.

On Dec. 3, cable giant Comcast justified a long-standing industry rumor and completed an $8 billion deal to acquire a controlling 51% of NBC Universal stock from former owner General Electric.

Huge companies gobbling up big (but not as huge) companies is nothing new in any business, especially broadcasting. All of the major networks are owned by parent companies. Disney owns ABC. Newscorp owns Fox. Westinghouse owns CBS. Now, Comcast possesses NBC -- as Conan O'Brien celebrates in this clip.

Here's my opinion on best/worst lists of any given year: I love reading them and I hate writing them. It's been a lot of fun looking at what my colleagues here at TV Squad have had to say about the newly ended year, but it's been a slow walk through hell trying to actually make my own list. I'm not sure why, exactly, I had so many problems with the list. Maybe it's because I'm afraid that some sort of cosmic force is going to hold me accountable for what I say here. Like, I'll die and meet the God of TV and he (or she) is going to be waiting for me with my 2006 best of picks and be angry that I left Two and a Half Men off the list (note, in this scenario, the God of TV is related to Charlie Sheen).

My dislike of having to write this list is part of the reason why I'm posting it in early January and not in the Christmas-New Years corridor like I wanted to. Every time I sat down to write it I suddenly found something I had to do around the house (like take a nap or eat some cheese). Today, though, I finally forced the words out of my fingers. I'm looking forward to hearing how wrong I am about all of these choices!

My best and worst 2006 after the jump...

(Part 1 of 5)

It seems like every year at about this time, when everyone is making their big "tech" predictions for next year, someone always says that next year is going to be the year for TV on the internet. While it may not yet be a perfect system, or exactly as we all had expected it to be, whoever predicted that statement last December would be right on the money; 2005 will definitely go down as the year that TV came to the internet. The networks seemed to realize, throughout the year, that this internet thing wasn't going to go away anytime soon, and they ought to go ahead and embrace it. Tie-ins ranging from recaps and commentaries, to downloadable specials and entire episodes, to live tie-ins with game shows started popping up all over the web. And let me tell you, if you think that 2005 was big, wait 'til 2006 -- you ain't seen nothing yet. (Yes I know that's grammatically incorrect, it's from a song people!) On with the show!