First, take note that it's in television and not on, because this list from Entertainment Weekly has a lot of people behind the scenes along with people in front of the camera.Who do you think is the smartest person in television? It's someone who created a show a lot of us watch every single Sunday night. I'll let you click on the link above to see who the smartest person is.
Like most lists of this type, this one is notable for who it doesn't have as much as for who it does have. There aren't any news people or journalists on the list, and Stephen Colbert isn't either. We're not talking about smart as in the most educated. EW is using a mixture of success, ambition and intelligence to come up with their 25. I wouldn't put anyone from The View on the list, that's for sure. But I don't have a problem with people like Oprah Winfrey, J.J. Abrams, Matthew Weiner, Tina Fey, Jason Kilar (from Hulu.com), or the execs behind some of the more successful shows and networks.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-05-2008 @ 3:52PM
Tim-1 said...
In my opinion Bob, there is no doubt about it....the most intelligent person is Grace Park. I LOVE reading her interviews.
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12-12-2008 @ 9:27PM
bsgfan2003 said...
I've come to collect you for BSG talk at:
cliqueclack.com/tv/
See you there!
12-05-2008 @ 4:05PM
Zachary said...
No news people? It has Rachel Maddow. Jon Stewart is there, too. He's not really a news man but he is newsy.
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12-05-2008 @ 4:14PM
GROM said...
You got to be kidding me!
Seth the smartest person on TV and Tina F. second.
Yeah right.
J.J. Abrams is much smarter than 2 of these plp combine.
No conservatives on the list.
I have to say to Lou Dubbs and Glen Beck are not on the list and they belong in top 5.
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12-06-2008 @ 5:20PM
Joseph said...
Lou Dobbs? Are you kidding me? His statements on immigration and leprosy alone disqualify him.
12-06-2008 @ 12:13PM
Joseph said...
Lou Dobbs? Are you kidding me? His statements on immigration and leprosy alone disqualify him.
12-05-2008 @ 4:54PM
C C said...
I give a mixed review on EW's list. Tina Fey, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Glenn Close, Chuck Lorre, and Josh Schwartz definitely deserve their spots. Several of the others, however, are execs/producers who've mostly gotten where they are by borrowing and using other people's concepts.
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12-05-2008 @ 5:01PM
Elf said...
Seth MacFarlane has earned a nine-figure bonanza off of fart jokes and random pop-culture references. It takes a certain level of brilliance to pull that off. I won't begrudge him his place on the list.
But I clicked on the ling and the first picture I saw was the cast of The View, sans Barbara Walters. Looking at that picture, even if Joy Behar were an Einstein-level genius, averaging her out with Hasslebeck, Goldberg and Shepperd would still give you four drooling morons.
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12-06-2008 @ 4:33AM
jeff stiefer said...
they also forgot about the writing staff at Futurama where there are multiple advanced degrees among them.
and the ladies on the View, really? One of them was not sure the earth was round and one thought GW was a good president...that kinda set the bar for the rest of the list, i guess.
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12-06-2008 @ 7:25AM
Jimmy said...
The View, Tyra Banks and Ryan Seacrest?
I think the list was mislabeled!
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12-06-2008 @ 12:05PM
Adam said...
Sorry, couldn't make it past the first one when I clicked the link. The women of the View? Seriously? How do they make a "smartest" list when 1/5 of them thinks the world is flat?
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12-06-2008 @ 3:34PM
Phil said...
EW.com? Eeeeeewwww. If you're so smart why ain't you rich? Well that's it. They're all rich. Well most of them are anyway. Look Rachel Maddow being put in the same article as Elizabeth Hasselback as both being part of the set "the smartest people in TV"? Come on. They don't call it the boob tube for nothing. I don't watch TV to get smart. For that I drink beer. . .
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12-06-2008 @ 8:04PM
James said...
Mitch Huwitz? Anybody?
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12-07-2008 @ 2:22PM
Zach said...
I had to stop reading when they ranked Jon Stewart lower than Tyra Banks, are you f*cking kidding me? The women from the view? This was possibly the worst list in the history if the interweb.
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12-09-2008 @ 5:36PM
Dwayne said...
I recently starting using http://www.OVpulse.com which is a guide to the most watch TV Shows, Movies, Cartoons, News and other channels. They have this cool chat overlay' function so any video I'm watching, anywhere, I can chat over. Their site is updated hourly so for me it's a
time saver if you kow what I mean? don't have to visit 28+ different sites to get my fix :) An idea whos'e time has come...
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