They call it the boob tube. Those who sit and watch it for hours are called couch potatoes. When we plunk our kids down in front of it, it becomes our baby sitter. We have so many derogatory names for it, but television has been one of the biggest sources of entertainment for people for over 50 years now. There must be a reason, or maybe even several. Well, instead of taking you through a long boring history of television (like who invented it) we're going to show you just why it has become one of the greatest and longest lasting forms of modern entertainment today. How? By doing a little memory lane dance down the ages. What follows are just a few of the many millions of memorable television moments that have made the medium so important in our lives.

You can literally just put your hand into a hat and pick out a moment. That's how many there are. TV Guide, probably one of the most popular TV magazines of all time, printed a list of its top 100 TV moments. And even after the printing, scores of people wrote in to complain about all the great moments that were left out. Who could blame them? Of course who could fault TV Guide for missing a few? Way too many to choose from.

Need a small sample?

What about November 22, 1963? Everybody knows where they were on that day if they were walking this planet. For many, it was watching "I Love Lucy" and suddenly having your show interrupted to find out that President John F. Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas. We followed the whole course of that day and the days after until we ultimately saw a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, right in front of our eyes. For the TV world, this was one of the most surreal moments in television history.

What about the episode of one of the greatest situation comedies of all time, "All In The Family" where Sammy Davis Jr. pays Archie a visit? He gets to see what a real bigot Archie is and at the end when taking a photo with Archie, kisses him on the cheek just as the photo is taken. This is a moment that will go down as one of the greatest and funniest of all time.

What about how you were glued to your set on August 29, 1967, when after four seasons of being on the run, Richard Kimball finally catches up with the one armed man who killed his wife? Did you know that over 30 million people tuned in to see this saga finally come to an end. "The Fugitive" was one of the greatest endings of any show ever. So great that a movie was made based on the whole series.

We could go on and on and on. The list of great television moments is as long as the day and then some. The few examples above are only a handful. And in the years to come, there will be even more great moments to add to this list.

Some might say that television is the ultimate entertainment.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Entertainment