Which quality television shows deserve to be put in a time capsule to be opened 100 years from now?

All genres can be counted including, drama. comedy, talk and variety, news magazine shows. Below is my list.

Ben Casey
Twilight Zone
All in the Family
Mary Tyler Moore
Dick Van Dyke
Seinfeld
Rockford Files
Hawaii Five O
Edward R. Murrow
60 Minutes
The Anthology Series
Jack Benny
Dean Martin
Mash
Law and Order
I Love Lucy
Police Story      
Tonight Show w/Johnny Carson
David Letterman

I could go on. I would love your input. Thanks. I am blanking out.

So many possibilities. I think anything that goes in a time capsule should show how people lived at the time the series was filmed. So while I Love Lucy should go in because of its sheer brilliance, Leave it to Beaver should be in there as well. Say rule should apply for the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.

I agree with most of the shows above.

Here's some excellent shows (in alphabetical order) from the last 20 years or so that can proudly stand with what's already listed:

Lost
Seinfeld
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Sopranos
Twin Peaks
The Wire
The X-Files

The Adventures of Superman (George Reeves)
The Avengers
The Bob Newhart Show
The Donna Reed Show
Fawlty Towers
The Flintstones
Gilligan's Island (yes, I said it... someone had to, although it'll probably still be playing somewhere)
The Jetsons (TOS)
Jonny Quest (TOS)
Leave it to Beaver
Mission Impossible
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Outer Limits (TOS)
The Prisoner
Star Trek (TOS)
Wild, Wild West

Of course there are more and almost anyone will tend to include some of their favorites whether or not they are truly deserving.  I know I have...

David's idea is a good one, reflecting the era, etc.

Adam-12.  Late 60's-early 70's cop show.  To me, captured a realistic day in the life of an LA patrol car's calls.
Barney Miller.  Being around then, this one to me reflected that mid-70's NYC era
Bewitched.  Nope, not "Sam" twitching , but the housewife/home sets of the show, etc, 60's
Charlie's Angels.  I know, no "value" :)  But, that 1st season was a mega-icon.
Columbo.  70's era cop/detective hit.  "Maam, just one more thing..." :)
Dick Van Dyke Show.  Same reasons as BW but more so.  imo, mega-classic from the 60's
Donna Reed Show.  Late 50's/early 60's flavor to perfection.
Family.  Mid-70's era depicted well.  I only liked the early seasons of this one.
Father Knows Best.  Mid-late 50's mega-hit.  Brings back great memories of that time.
Flipper.  Talk about a great example of a single-Dad raising the boys in the 60's.  Outstanding scene-shootings in the show.
The Fugitive.  Enough said.  All-time classic, early-mid 60's mirror perfect.
Get Smart.  Classic mid-late 60's comedy.
Hill St. Blues.  Early 80's flavor but I only liked the early seasons.
Happy Days.  Set in the 50's.  Authentic, imo, but only the early seasons.
I Spy.  Great 60's spy show.  Love those location shootings.
Lassie.  Spans decades but I remember it for that mid-late 50's flavor and the love depicted in the families.
Leave it to Beaver.  Mega-icon, late 50's/early 60's.  This one, in the later seasons, really caught the "era" for me. 
Lois & Clark.  Early 90's.
Love Boat.  Late 70's only the 1st 2 seasons for me.
Mannix.  Late 60's/70's cop shows....ahhhhh :)
Matlock.  80's cop/lawer show.  Great!
Mission: Impossible.  The mega-hit from the late 60's "cold war" era.  Fan of 1st 3 seasons.
Perry Mason.  Late 50's LA location shooting.  Cool.
Rockford Files.  70's!  Lot of comments at that time of this one more realistically depicting most of those real "PI's" out on the street trying to make ends meet,
Room 222.  Late 60's/early 70's high school drama.  As one in HS at that time, excellent portrayal of that time.
Route 66.  mega-icon of the early 60's.  "live on the road/see the country" feel.  My cousin actually lived somewhat a parallel lifestyle for a time back then.
The Saint B/W years.  Early 60's location senes and excellent spy show.
Secret Agent ("Danger Man").  Wow!  Early-mid 60's cold-war spy genre.  One of my all-timers.
Steve Canyon.  Late 50's Air Force tribute. 
Taxi.  70's NYC.  Was there back then on busines trips.  Memories :)
Voyage...Sea.  60's sub show with that touch of "cold war".  1st 2 seasos.
Welcome Back Kotter.  Mid-70's.  Love this show!

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These are nostalgic favorites that were set in other times but if I were packing that capsule, they'd be in there :)

Big Valley
Combat!
Bionic Woman (70's)
Daniel Boone.  Excellent show from the historic Revolutionary Ware era (thanks, you-know-who, for this one!)
Earth 2.  imo, a real 1-season gem from the early 90's that was set in the future.
The Flintstones.  Who could omit "Bedrock" from the  capsule? "Wilma!!!!!!!"  "Fred, if you don't stop shouting, you'll be wearing that Brontosaurus Sandwich instead of eating it!!!" 
Green Acres.  My favorite of the "Henning" flavor rural shows.  "Mr Kimble"
Hogan's Heroes.  Enough said.  Classic.
Honey West.  Lesser-known '65 detective show with an unusual female lead.
The Lone Ranger.  Clayton Moore seasons only.  Later 50's memories watching that one after school.
Looney Tunes.  Can't omit some of those. 
Rawhide.  One of the best Westerns ever, imo.  Captured that cattle-drive hostoric era.
The Rifleman.  One of the best "father-son" shows ever, imo.  Having met Johnny Crawford years ago, special memories for me.
Time Tunnel.  My all-time "kid" memory scifi favorote.
Wild Wild West.  Especially the 1st B/W season.  Robert Conrad had that part nailed with great acting repport between him and Ross Martin.

A couple of miniseries to finish up:

Centennial.  Wow.  What a series depicting several generations of Colorado history.
Rich Man, Poor Man.  70's icon miniseries
Shogun.  Early 80's series. imo, one of the best ever miniseries.
Winds of War & War/Rememberance.  WWII historical dramas with stellar cast.
 

Without question Saturday Night Live due to how each season addressed life as it was during the time it originally aired (including the politics, news and entertainment/music of the day) and in turn how it impacted popular culture.

STAR TREK (oiriginal)
M*A*S*H
THE TWILIGHT ZONE

MATT LINCOLN

My picks --

Cinderella (the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, original broadcast w/Julie Andrews)
Dick Van Dyke
The Fugitive
Hill Street Blues
Law & Order (the original, not SVU & CI)
Leave It To Beaver (yeah, I know -- but it's an icon)
Mary Tyler Moore
MASH
Playhouse 90
St. Elsewhere
Victory at Sea
You Are There

But --

Here's a question for you: what format will you put it in? Film will likely fade in 100 years and today's formats -- both digital and analog -- will be obsolete and unreadable. Remember 3-1/2" floppy disks? 5-1/4" floppies? LPs? 45s? Two-inch reel tape? Quarter-inch reel tape? Punch cards? Videocassettes? Eight-tracks? How about audio cylinders and dictaphone reels? And HD DVD? They all came and went in the last 100 years -- HD DVD in the last five! Predictions are that CDs will be gone soon. Anyone think DVD and Blu-ray will be around in 2109?

Even if you take the safest choice (film), and manage to keep the film from fading, don't count on projectors being around, especially for specialized formats. More and more Hollywood films are being shot digital and shown digital, so the days of those big 35mm projectors are probably numbered. Heck, who knows how long Kodak will even make film? As for any other film format, ever try to find a 16mm projector recently? You can do it, but it ain't easy.

Conclusion: I don't envy anyone in the time capsule business!

Put them on DVD, and put a player with it.  The format itself deserves to be in the time capsule.  Surely someone will still be able to figure out how to get power to it.

Roots
The Brady Bunch
Dallas
All in the Family
The Honeymooners
The Twilight Zone
I Love Lucy
The Flintstones
Seinfeld
Survivor
Jeoardy!
Wheel of Fortune
Wonder Woman
 

Roots
The Brady Bunch
Dallas
All in the Family
The Honeymooners
The Twilight Zone
I Love Lucy
The Flintstones
Seinfeld
Survivor
Jeoardy!
Wheel of Fortune
Wonder Woman
 

duplicate post

A few documentaries:

The Ascent of Man
Cosmos
Connections & Connections 2 (the later series were not as good, in my view)
Ken Burns' The Civil War
Civilisation
Planet Earth
The Blue Planet

Mini-Series:

The Adams Chronicles
Pride and Prejudice (the 1996 BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle)
The Winds of War
War and Remembrance
I, Claudius
Ursala K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven (the 1980 PBS adaptation which Le Guin herself was involved with and approved, not the execrable 2002 "Lathe of Heaven" produced by A&E, which abandoned half the plot and characters from the novel and the earlier film, as well as most of the philosophical underpinnings of both.  Le Guin pronounced it "misguided and uninteresting", and from what I saw of it, I agree.)
QBVII The first mini-series on American television launched Anthony Hopkins as an international star.  Follows the lives of two men who come from different worlds and follow very different paths through the horrors of WW2 until their paths finally cross in a London courtroom during a sensational libel case that could destroy one or both of them. 
Shogun. Historical drama set in Japan.  Heavily fictionalized, which loses huge points with me, but still a fascinating epic that has scale, sweep, color and some wonderful performances, beginning with Richard Chamberlain as a shipwrecked Englishman who becomes the first European to join the ranks of the samurai.

I'll doubtless think of more later.

Regards,

Joe

Magnum P.I.
Simon & Simon
Battlestar Galactica (latest version)
SCTV
Six Feet Under
Deadwood
Cheers
Frasier
Band Of Brothers
From The Earth To The Moon
Babylon 5
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Max Headroom
I Dream of Jeannie
The Golden Girls (Even now, 25 years after its premiere, it's as fresh and funny as ever. )

I'm not sure how to answer the original question.  Do I choose for my own interests, or do I choose for the sake of history?  Do I choose high-quality shows with limited interest (at the time), or do I choose shows that were "typical" for the era?

A more intriguing and answerable question came later:


Digital, by definition, is a bunch of 0s and 1s, which are easy to store, copy, and translate.  I'm not sure if DVD and Blu-Ray will be the reigning formats in 100 years (I very much doubt it), but the format used then is likely to still be digital.  I don't know if film will even have a role then.

While I agree with many already posted, I have to add two more:
- Honeymooners (classic 39 episodes)
- Andy Griffith Show (seasons 1 through 5)

Film probably won't (though low-tech things have been written off before and survive still. Books, anyone?). As for digital being "easy to store, copy, and translate", it ain't necessarily so, to quote the Gershwins. Remember, whatever medium you put it on will stay locked away in a box underground for 100 years. It won't be transferred to something newer, like data on floppies being copied to CD.

Consider this from Cliff Stoll, who in 1979 helped record the data from the NASA Pioneer spacecraft's flyby of Saturn: "To make certain that we didn't lose any of this precious data, we saved it in four formats: 9-track magnetic tape, 7-track tape, paper tape, and punch cards. Fifteen years later, all those cards and tapes survive in a Tucson warehouse. They're in fine shape, but I can't read 'em. Punch-card and paper-tape readers just don't exist any more. Nor do those big reel-to-reel tape recorders." He was writing in 1994, and you see how high-end technology got obsolete real fast.

In short, it's not the data that's the problem; it's how you store it. Anyone assuming DVDs will be readable 100 years hence, good luck. You're assuming that you have a player (and as suggested above you could put one in the capsule). You're also assuming however:

(a) The player will power up in 2109 and hasn't gone bad from sitting unused for a century (and that 110-volt alternating current is still in use, probably a safe bet but who knows for sure?) -- if it doesn't power up or skips, who'll know how to fix it?;

(b) The DVD itself hasn't fallen victim to rot of some kind (even the manufacturers aren't claiming 100-year lifetimes, and while plastic may be almost forever, substrate layers staying stuck together and uncontaminated is not); and

(c) The screen has NTSC compatibility.

On that last, you could put a player with built-in screen into the box, but that still leaves you with (a) and (b).

Like I said, I don't envy anyone in the time capsule business!

I agree with perhaps four or five of the programs some of listed above but no more than that.

I would add the documentaries by Ken Burns.

The Lucy Show
Green Acres
Bewitched
Three's Company
Happy Days
The Golden Girls
All in the Family
The Jeffersons
Gilligan's Island
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
The Andy Griffith Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Get Smart
The Brady Bunch
Laverne & Shirley
Mama's Family
Looney Tunes
The Three Stooges
The Flintstones
ect., ect., ect. ...

There are many good suggestions that I agree with.  Just a few others that come to mind are

Gunsmoke (before Dennis Weaver left the cast)
Poirot (Mystery! on PBS)
Prime Suspect
Brideshead Revisited
Upstairs Downstairs
The Carol Burnett Show
Your Show of Shows

Maybe in 100 years they'll release seasons 4-6 of Green Acres.

Along with Batman (1966), The Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman, and the Movie Song of the South!

Saturday Night Live is an excellent choice. Thanks for posting.

     

Considering this is for a time capsule, Doctor Who has to be in there.

BOSTON LEGAL - For a couple of reasons.  Political commentary woven into the show, which I didn't always agree with but which was done in an entertaining manner like a lot of 70s sitcoms.  The great onscreen chemistry between Shatner and James Spader. 

 

MAVERICK - The classic non-cowboy western with a fun sense of humor.  Well worthy.

 

ALL IN THE FAMILY - Great funny show that stands up after all this time.  Who doesn't know a Mike or Archie????

 

I think these are three classic shows from different eras.

COP ROCK! I say we mess with the future generation a little bit