Yesterday I talked about the music of 2003. Today I’ll talk about Television (yeah I know I said yesterday I would talk about movies too, but I had a lot more to say about TV than I thought). Now I don’t watch too much network television, but I get the feeling that not too many people do nowadays. I do however catch alot of movies. With that being said let’s get to my opinion on this year.

Best Network TV Show: There aren’t too many shows I will go out of my way to watch on the “regular” channels. However, the first time I saw The Tracy Morgan Show I was hooked. I haven’t enjoyed a network non-reality show like this since the first season of The Bernie Mac show (of course I don’t watch that now….). CSI: Miami is pretty decent as well, if I happen to flip around and catch it I’ll watch it.

Best Reality Show: I watched a great deal of reality programming this year. Average Joe was good although I knew she wouldn’t pick the poor guy. Married By America suprised me. I even got caught up in the America’s Next Top Model mess thanks to Drea. All of that said, there is no doubt that MTV’s Making the Band was by FAR my favorite show on TV period this season. I hosted viewing parties for it. Hell I still follow “Da Band” and laugh at moments such as Fred’s bathtub scene in their most recent video. Making The Band made my week every year and made up for a piss poor Real World season.

Most Improved Show: Around The Horn on ESPN started out on a bad note for me. As many of you know, my old column in the Maroon Tiger was entitled Around the Horn, but I didn’t have the foresight to copywrite the name, so I was trying to hate the show when it started. But as time passed I started to really enjoy the little quirks on the show, like Woody Paige getting mistreated by Max Kellerman and J.A. Adende putting in work to make up for all of the shame that Jayson Blair put to black writers by winning the show at least once a week. Those of you sports fans who aren’t watching Around The Horn don’t know what you are missing, it’s right on the heels of PTI both literally and figuratively

Best Sitcom in Syndication: I just wanted a reason to mention A Different World.

Best Show That Might Not Come Back: If the NFL bigwigs, who have already shafted most cable subscribers with their facist Direct TV bias and black-out rules, have their way, Playmakers will not be back on ESPN. Maybe the NBA will pick up the ball if the NFL drops it (which seems likely) and let ESPN do season 2 about a Basketball team. The way the season ended, it would be a shame to leave such a promising show on the sidelines!

Biggest Drop Off in Quality: The Entire HBO Line-up once the Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm ended their seasons completely fell off. Six Feet Under just didn’t have that certain something different it had in the previous season. Carnivale never really got a grip on me. The Wire never gained any momentum. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for the next seasons of Curb and Sopranos.

Best Reason To Subscribe to HBO: This is a three way tie between The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Da Ali G Show. The Sopranos just keeps on entertaining, although this season wasn’t QUITE as good as past seasons, elements like Ralphie’s death and Christopher’s intervention made it better than 99% of programming on all of television. Curb Your Enthusiam is laugh out loud funny every single episode! People missing the brand of humor that Seinfeld used to offer need look no further. Da Ali G Show is one of my personal quirks, many people hate it, I can’t get enough of it.

Worst Attempt at Trying to be HBO: If it wasn’t bad enough that Showtime’s boxing and movie selections are worse than HBO, they had to try to come up with some “original programming” that was trying to hard to be HBO. Every single show can be described as an HBO knockoff in some way or another. If it weren’t for the occassional Tyson fight there’d be no reason to watch Showtime HBOlite.

Best Cable Channel: VH1 made a serious push, and MTV is always dependable, but it really comes down to two channels. ESPN and HBO are neck and neck. Both have quality original programming, but still manage to stay true to their orignal intents. In a pinch I’d have to choose HBO because I think it alone is worth the price of cable. Seriously, no one who owns cable should pass up on a chance to get HBO in their programming deal, it’s worth it!

That’s it for today, tomorrow we will go to the movies.