Why 'Best Of TV' Lists Are A Fool's Errand

If you're a TV and media critic, your workday is likely split into three unequal parts. There are the pieces you write without anyone asking for them, the pieces that you'd like to write but probably won't have time and the pieces you don't really want to write but have to for pageview and/or business reasons.

Year-end "Best Of" lists fall into the latter category more often than not because at the end of the day, you're not likely to create a list all that different than the ones being cranked out your fellow critics. If you compiled every "Best of 2013" list cranked out in the next six weeks, you'll find that most of them are topped by "Breaking Bad," and are drawn from about 20 of 25 possibilities. Sure, they may be ranked differently depending on the critic, but they are not going to vary all that much from outlet to outlet.

Executives in charge of pageviews love "Best Of" lists because they're easy to promote, popular with readers and make the shows and producers who are part of the list very happy. But from an intellectual point-of-view, are they really worthwhile? Critics spend lots of time pondering the choices and as Time critic James Poniewozik wrote this week, the expanding number of channels capable of creating quality shows has made the process of weeding down the list even more difficult.

There's been an ongoing discussion in 2013 amongst TV critics and industry watchers about whether or not we're living in a "Golden Age" of television. There has been much hand-wringing about how difficult it is to keep up with all the worthwhile shows on a regular basis. But that argument misses the point.

Yes, there are a lot of very good and even great TV shows on the air right now. But that's a reflection of the fact that there we are in the midst of an explosion of new programs - bad and good. The reasons behind the boom are too many to get into here, but the result is that no matter how hard you try as a viewer (or a critic), you can never watch everything that deserves your attention.

Most TV critics think of themselves as the equivalent of a tour guide to television. They see themselves as hopefully highlighting the shows that deserve the attention of viewers (and warning them about the ones to stay away from). At their core, "Best Of" lists are a reflection of those values. An effort to capture the entire viewing year into one or two consumable lists.

But if the "Best Of" lists reflect a tour guide approach to TV criticism, I would argue that most readers are most in need of a park ranger approach to covering television. Rather than distilling choices down to the "best," it's more useful to provide context and choices and a larger perspective. Does anyone really need to be reminded "Breaking Bad" was a great show? I don't think so. It's much more useful to talk about some of the good shows that didn't get as much attention, the under-viewed ones that audiences missed and even the shows that are the best at delivering a solid 30 or 60 minutes of entertainment.

"Best Of" lists are a fun intellectual exercise and arguing over your list is the TV critic version of those music clerks arguing over the which band is the best in the movie "Empire Records." But like those clerks, we can get so wrapped up in the mental fun of it all that we forget about the needs of our readers.

What was the best TV show of 2013? You probably don't care.

UPDATE Weds. 2:00 p.m. CT: On Twitter, Time's James Poniewozik notes that some of my writing might have been a bit muddled in this piece:

@aysrick agree w much of this, but: you begin saying crix don't really want to write lists & end saying only crix care about them, no?

— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) November 13, 2013

@aysrick I'm guessing what you meant is that the lists don't serve readers' real needs, tho readers flock to them anyway (hence pageviews)?

— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) November 13, 2013

And, ladies and gentlemen, that's why James works at Time and I don't. That is pretty much the point I was trying to make, although I think there's also a bit of ego wrapped up in writing a "Best Of" list. There are few things more satisfying for a writer than putting together a list of the things you think are important. But it's true the lists are a time sink for critics and while the pieces do get pageviews, they are TV criticism's version of a cute cat GIF. Readers will click on the link, but there isn't much value involved once they see the page. It's one of those features that get written because it's an expected part of the holidays. Also, it does give critics something to write about instead of the latest Christmas special live from Rockefeller Center.