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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Top 10 shows in tough TV year

By Gail Pennington St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In five or 10 years, will we look back at 2008 as the year TV died?

Maybe not, but from a vantage point in the near future, we certainly might see it as one in which television lost its footing.

The start of the year found TV at a standstill, with writers walking picket lines and the fall season already in jeopardy.

By the time the strike ended on Feb. 12 (fittingly, the same day CBS premiered an emergency winter edition of “Big Brother”), many viewers – particularly the younger ones prized by advertisers – had already found other things to do.

With much less time than usual to develop series for fall, the broadcast networks, already groping for new ways to engage and entertain increasingly fragmented audiences, were unable to launch even their usual, meager quota of fall hits.

Only CBS – whose decision to rush its procedural series back into production after the strike looks brilliant in retrospect – had a breakout fall success, “The Mentalist.”

By October, the broadcast networks were down 7 percent in viewership (16 percent for NBC) from a year earlier. Even former hits, such as NBC’s “Heroes,” showed steep declines in ratings as well as quality.

The failing economy was a one-two punch for television in 2008, as the big corporations that own the broadcast networks saw advertising sales drop and moved to slash costs.

Cable audiences overall continued to grow, although an abundance of options gave each network a comparatively small piece of the pie.

In the view from the living room couch, though, 2008 may be best remembered as the year your favorite show was canceled (“Moonlight,” “Jericho”) or ended its run (“Boston Legal”). Just when we needed TV the most, it seemed that TV wasn’t there for us.

All that is a long way of saying that compiling a Top 10 list of TV in 2008 is tougher than usual. But here goes:

1. The presidential election. Who wanted to watch unscripted TV when the race for the presidency was so involving, with characters so colorful no writer could make them up?

The election also boosted everything that touched it, from “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” to evening newscasts and cable news networks.

2. “Mad Men.” In its second season, AMC’s drama about dark secrets in an advertising agency in the 1960s was, impossibly, even more riveting. And performances don’t get better than Jon Hamm’s tour de force as the mysterious Don Draper.

(Honorable mention: AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and its fearless star, Bryan Cranston.)

3. “30 Rock.” Maybe not as hilarious, so far, as last season, the smart, sharp “30 Rock” still provides more guffaws per half-hour than any other network comedy.

(Honorable mention: “The Office,” now an old reliable source of laughs and cringes.)

4. “Lost.” Just thinking about last season’s remarkable recovery produces bated-breath excitement for Season 5, which arrives Jan. 21. Don’t let us down, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

5. “The Shield.” The FX drama was uncompromising to the end, with creator Shawn Ryan providing fitting ends for its complex characters.

6. “The Wire.” The acclaimed David Simon drama didn’t wrap up with its very best season, but nevertheless goes out as one of television’s most-respected series.

7. “Dirty Sexy Money.” ABC pulled the plug after an abbreviated second season, also dumping freshmen “Pushing Daisies” and “Eli Stone.” I loved them, too, but I could understand why their whimsy might not have drawn broad audiences.

“Dirty Sexy Money,” though, was so smart, funny and deliciously soapy, with such outstanding acting from an ensemble cast headed by Peter Krause, that I still don’t understand why more nurturing couldn’t have created a “Dallas”-style phenomenon.

8. “Top Chef.” With “Project Runway” stuck in limbo between Bravo and Lifetime, the cooking competition became must-see recipe TV.

9. The Summer Olympics. Michael Phelps’ achievements were stunning; NBC’s coverage was thorough and (except for an overload of beach volleyball) rarely annoying.

10. “John Adams.” HBO brought David McCullough’s biography of the second president to life, with a brilliant Paul Giamatti as the sturdy but oft-disappointed Adams and Laura Linney as his tough, tender wife, Abigail.