twelve days of festivus

On the fifth day of Christmas, TV gave to me ... five cancelled shows ...

Every new season, a network will cancel a show (at least) that a ton of people like. Of course, every year the networks cancel shows that nobody likes. The five shows on this list include a little of both. Feel free to list other shows in the comments, but these are the five that stood out to me in 2009.

1. Guiding Light. I had to put Guiding Light at number one. You can't put the cancellation of a show that was on every weekday for 72 years at number three or number five. It just wouldn't be right, even if the show did limp to its end. The longest-running soap opera (and one of the longest-running shows on TV, period) started on radio in 1937 and switched to television in 1952 (it was actually on both radio and TV for a while). The last episode aired in September.

It's that time of year again... time to break out the metal pole, commence with the airing of grievances, and get limber in preparation to demonstrate the feats of strength. Yes, folks, Festivus is upon us once again!

Starting today, we'll be presenting what has become a yearly tradition for us: our own version of The Twelve Days of Festivus. We're going to start with Rich's list of twelve shows that... well, you'll have to tune in later today to find out why those shows make our list. Each day, we'll have a list of things about TV that annoyed or enthralled us this past year, culminating on December 23 (the official day of Festivus, according to Frank Costanza), when we list the best TV moment of the year -- pretty tough, because this year had a lot of moments to choose from.

If you're new here and don't know what the heck we're talking about, here are the lists from 2006 and 2007.

For the next twelve straight days, we here at TV Squad will be performing our own rendition of The Twelve Days of Festivus, counting down from Rich's number twelve later today. Be sure to check back every day for the next gift that TV has given us this Festivus season -- you won't want to miss any of them.