I make little notes about topics I want to write about on this blog and often when I get busy, I discover some other blog I follow has beaten me to one of them, saying much of what I was going to say. F'rinstance, my friend Ken Levine wrote about Rolling Stone's list of 100 Best Sitcoms of All Time.
As with all such lists, a lot depends on what criteria you use and what you decide qualifies at all. To the latter point, I agree with Ken that The Simpsons and other animated shows probably belong on a separate list. The criteria is a little muddier. The list is called "100 Best Sitcoms of All Time" but Ken and some of the selectors for Rolling Stone seem to think that means "Best, Most Influential, Beloved and Enduring Sitcoms," which is not quite the same thing.
I'd put Car 54, Where Are You? in the Top 20 if all we're considering is "best" but I don't think it was influential, beloved or enduring. If we were weighting for "beloved," I'd put The Andy Griffith Show in the Top Three and if you don't believe me, go visit the Andy Griffith Museum in Mt. Airy, North Carolina (as I did) and talk to the people who make regular pilgrimages to the place. There's no comparable museum for Friends or All in the Family or even my favorite, The Dick Van Dyke Show. (If I could, I'd open a museum for Seinfeld and I'd have a lunchroom that serves great soup but won't let you have any of it.)
Anyway, my list would be a lot more like Ken's than Rolling Stone's but I'd have The Phil Silvers Show (aka Sgt. Bilko) in the Top Ten (Rolling Stone has it at #70!!!) and somewhere on mine, you'd see Married With Children, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Addams Family and He & She.
And did Rolling Stone omit Amos & Andy because they didn't think it was funny or because it was Amos & Andy?