Channel One News
When "Channel One" first aired in the early 1990's, it seemed like a cute idea: Give teenagers a healthy dose of news without getting too complicated; give them the genocidal fall of Yugoslavia by way of "Sesame Street." Criticized at first for showing exclusively in middle- and high-school home-rooms (and airing ads for Gatorade and Crystal Pepsi between reports), the youthful "Channel One" news team has since journeyed into Sudan, North Korea, Iraq and other terrifying places -- and has earned an armload of journalism awards, including a Peabody. Not bad from a bunch of kids -- and not too bad for a bunch of kids, either.

"American Idol"
"American Idol" is amazing on so many levels -- the cruelty,
the competitiveness, the nasty catchphrases of Simon Cowell.
What's more amazing is that the world's most diehard talent
search isn't even an original idea: It's just "Star Search" meets
"The Gong Show," where performers aren't just pitted against each other; they're also shamed, humiliated and all but one or two are coldly voted into oblivion. It's musical Darwinism out there, and "American Idol" is happy to destroy a few hundred dreams in order to find the next Clay Aiken. How successful is this gimmick? More people have voted for "American Idol" than have ever voted in a single presidential election.

"Seaquest DSV"
"Seaquest" began as a pretty good idea: In the near future, a giant submarine journeys beneath the sea, seeking strange new life at 20,000 fathoms. Helmed by Captain Bridger (Roy Scheider, of "Jaws" fame), the Seaquest crew would face perilous aqua-adventures, such as rival submarines, mysterious glowing rocks and mad scientists -- and at the end of every episode, an actual marine biologist from Woods Hole would talk about actual marine biology. So, after you saw a computerized dolphin translator on the show, the scientist would explain that dolphins do have a complex language of clicks and yawns, and we maybe could decipher it one day (yay, science!). This was all muddied in Season 2 when the producers got bored and introduced to the plots such things as aliens, giant sea-monsters, time-travel and ghosts. And just try to find a marine biologist who can explain ghosts to people.

"Unsolved Mysteries"
It seemed fitting to cast Robert Stack as the steely-eyed host of "Unsolved Mysteries." Years earlier, Stack had starred as Elliot Ness in "The Untouchables," donning the trench coat and skulking the streets of Chicago in search of Tommy guns and prohibited booze. "Mysteries" was successful for roughly a decade because it interviewed real victims of crime, real police investigators and endeavored to solve actual crimes -- viewers could call toll-free with informative, sometimes life-saving, leads. More hands-on than "Rescue: 911," and more in-depth than "Cops," the show's ratings steadily declined until 2003, when Stack passed away. But one simple legacy remains: "This program is about unsolved mysteries ... What you are about to see is not a news broadcast ..."