FishbowlNY is a big fan of Vulture and its Approval Matrix (not the TV version though). So we’re delighted to see that for Ad Age’s TV issue, the editors at Vulture created an Approval Matrix for the entire history of television.

What rated the best? Seinfeld, Season Four of The Wire, and the Frost/Nixon debates. The worst? Jay Leno stealing Conan O’Brien’s thunder and the blundering background checks of most reality shows.

Speaking of reality shows, there was no mention of The Real World, and that is a glaring weakness in this otherwise great Matrix. If it weren’t for MTV putting a camera on seven strangers picked to live in a house, TV as we know it would be a lot different.

Quite simply, a life without seeing a man named Puck pick his nose then use the same finger to scoop peanut butter out of a jar, is not a life we would like to know.