I know this may not be evident to folks who've never seen, much less read, an issue of Empire, but it is a genre-specific magazine that covers pretty much exclusively science fiction, fantasy, horror, and action films and television programs. True, shows outside those genres show up on the 50-greatest list, but there is no way anyone who'd actually buy a copy of the issue containing said list would expect a balanced survey of television greatness across the generic spectrum. As is true of most magazines, Empire's audience is self-selecting.

Furthermore, it's worth remembering that Empire is a British magazine published mainly in the United Kingdom, and as a result, many shows that were groundbreaking in the U.S. or elsewhere, but which never caught on (or even got shown in the first place) in the U.K., are unlikely to show up. beowabbit makes this point explicitly, but it seems to be lost on some of the folks I've seen post the list in their own journals.

People have been reacting to this list with a fair measure of earnestness and even actual offense, which surprises me (I may be wrong, of course, since tone is notoriously difficult to suss out on Ye Olde Internette). I guess I just mean to say that you should no more take the Empire greatest-TV-shows list seriously than you would a Fangoria countdown of the best movies of all time -- Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yes; Citizen Kane, not so much.