The shows that never were

We all know that television is nothing if not derivative. From the beginning of the industry, successful programming has bred copycats; at the outset, it was Westerns, police dramas and private eyes, while in recent decades we've been deluged with shows about nothing (Seinfeld), shows about friends who all seem to live next to each other (Friends), shows about strangers thrown together (The Real World), singers trying to make it big (American Idol), and so on. Most of the time, the imitations are just that, pale knockoffs of the original, and many of them fail miserably. Sometimes, as was the case after the wave of shows imitating National Lampoon's Animal House, they all bomb.

Using this as a starting point, let's consider an intriguing article that appeared recently at The Ringer. The premise, based on Danny Boyle's upcoming movie Yesterday: what if the Beatles had never existed? Would another group have picked up the slack? Would rock music have evolved differently? Would their music still be successful if it were introduced today? It's an interesting exercise, the kind of question that fans love to hash out for hours in a restaurant while the server gives them dark sideways looks, or late night on social media. (Hint, hint!)

(There's a TV angle to this as well; how might The Ed Sullivan Show, for example, have been impacted? The Fab Four's four Sullivan appearances not only created a sensation, they ushered in an alliance between Sullivan and some of the biggest rock acts of the day, geared to appeal to younger viewers. Would this still have been the case if the Beatles never had been, or had this ship already sailed the night Ed welcomed Elvis to the stage?)

Anyway, here's the question before the court, and I'd like to open it up to all of you. Which TV show's absence, in your opinion, would have had the greatest impact on television's history, and on pop culture's history as well? Dragnet? I Love Lucy? All in the Family? Monday Night Football? Survivor? And what is it about this show that changes everything if you wipe it from our collective memory banks? Television is an enormously influential medium; there's hardly a corner of American culture that hasn't been touched by it. Surely the absence of a given show might have enormous ramifications on how the future evolved.

So fill in the blank, as Match Game might have put it: "How would television be different if _________ had never existed?" Use the comments section, and tell us why you feel that way. The possibilities are endless! TV