The 20 Biggest Moments in TV in the Last 20 Years

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To celebrate Yahoo’s 20th birthday (we don’t look a day over 18, right?), we’re looking back on 20 groundbreaking TV moments from the last 20 years. Join us for a (roughly chronological) walk down memory lane.

ER premieres

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Yes, it was an engrossing, well-written ensemble drama that brought us some of the most heartbreaking, compelling TV storytelling of the 20th century. But more importantly, it brought us George Clooney.

The Real World: San Francisco
MTV’s signature reality TV franchise may have devolved into a hot-tub-hookup-laden mess, but back in 1994 it was still a legitimate “social experiment” — and the casting of Pedro Zamora, a young gay man living with HIV, helped humanize the epidemic for a generation of young viewers.

OJ Simpson is tried on TV
From the slow-speed white Bronco chase to the controversial final verdict, the murder trial captivated the nation and forever altered the landscape of daytime TV. Which leads us to…

The slow death of daytime soap operas
In 1995, when the OJ trial ended, there were 11 soap operas on broadcast TV. Today there are four. After being regularly pre-empted for more than eight months during the OJ trial, daytime soaps struggled to regain their audience as sensationalistic talk shows encroached on their ratings territory. Though the era of Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael eventually came to an end, the daytime soap industry never truly recovered.

Hi-Def TV
We truly didn’t know how terrible our TV reception was until the introduction of this technology showed us what we were missing. (Namely: Crisp, sharp images.)

Total Request Live
Hosted by Carson Daly, this daily music video countdown show on MTV had a direct pipeline to teen viewers and helped create and sustain the popularity of late ’90s and early ’00s teen pop/boy bands. (Oh great, now we have “Bye Bye Bye” stuck in our heads.)

Seinfeld’s series finale

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There was no hugging, no learning as the landmark comedy came to an end — there was only a hugely divisive trial storyline that ended with TV’s most likeable misanthropes in jail. Some loved it, some hated it, and everyone used it as a point of comparison for all major series finales to come (at least, until that Sopranos cut-to-black situation).

Netflix
The mail-order DVD rental service helped spawn the binge-watching phenomenon and proved that you didn’t have to follow the traditional TV business model to become a powerhouse network.

Digital Video Recorders
We’re sorry, TV execs, what is this “appointment television” you speak of? We watch our favorite shows whenever we want, thanks to our friend Uncle TiVo.

The Sopranos premieres

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Not only is it one of the greatest shows ever made, it also made the hero — mob boss Tony Soprano — an incredibly bad man (think: murder, adultery, theft, general betrayal of key loved ones). Still, we couldn’t help but like the big, beleaguered oaf — we rooted for him even — and a new TV archetype, the “anti-hero,” was born.

TV’s whitest season
When the broadcast networks announced their fall schedules for the 1999-2000 season, none of the 26 new shows had a person of color in a leading role. In response, the NAACP launched the “Out of Focus, Out of Sync” campaign to address the woeful lack of diversity on network TV.

Survivor premieres
Who knew that watching people eat bugs and argue while stranded on a deserted island would become a national obsession? CBS did, that’s who! Their novel competition series became an instant sensation and helped launch the reality TV phenomenon.

The Office U.K. premieres

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Ricky Gervais’s brilliant cubicle-dweller comedy introduced viewers to a painfully funny new genre — cringe comedy — and spawned both the mockumentary craze and the much-loved NBC remake.

Janet Jackson’s boob escapes at the Super Bowl

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Oh, the horror! Due to a “wardrobe malfunction” (a phrase that will live on in our national lexicon forever), millions of football fans saw a flash of Ms. Jackson’s breast. Viewers were outraged, and the FCC tried for eight years to make CBS, the network that aired the game, pay $550,000 for the offense — but the Supreme Court shot them down in 2012.

iTunes adds TV shows
Trips on planes, trains, and automobiles (as long as you’re not driving) just got a lot more entertaining.

Puppy Bowl

Animal Planet’s brilliantly simple idea — who doesn’t like to watch puppies playing? — was also the first truly successful example of Super Bowl counter-programming.

The Real Housewives of Orange County premieres on Bravo
Bravo hoped this reality soap about rich California ladies would help the network capitalize on the success of Desperate Housewives and The O.C. What they got instead was the beginnings of a trash TV empire.

Roku/Apple TV
What’s that, cable execs? You say we need to have one of your bulky boxes to watch our favorite shows? Thanks to these two devices, we’re officially able to cut the cord.

Teen Mom
Forget the tabloid headlines. MTV’s long-running docuseries has “significantly reduced” the teen pregnancy rate, according to a 2014 study.

Shonda Rhimes rules

The EP of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder (above right with Scandal’s Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington) currently owns ABC’s Thursday-night lineup (#TGIT!). More importantly she’s the industry’s most successful black female showrunner, and she brought much-needed colorblind casting to the primetime landscape.