Please, as hard as it may be, limit the list to five. You don’t have to stretch to get to five, but pretend your set will be limited to only 5 networks year round.
That “year round” part forces me to eliminate ESPN, HBO and Showtime, so I’m already down to these:
CBS
FX
PBS
TCM
and I’ll stop there because the rest of them are touch and go for me.
I like your list. I almost went with the Weather Channel for my #5, but didn’t because when weather is an issue, I go with local stations, the best of which is an ABC affiliate, and except for Nashville I rarely watch anything on ABC. Same goes for NBC.
Animal Planet
MeTV
History Channel*
Discovery*
CBS
If I cared to take over the remote:
PBS
BBC America
TLC
Comedy Central
MeTV
*although it’s almost never history or science shows. My husband likes Pawn Stars, American Pickers and Deadliest Catch, Mountain Men and all those similar stupid shows about manly men living manly lifestyles that involve wearing lots of plaid and eschewing safety protocols.
CBS (The Price is Right, SEC/Florida Gators football)
Fox (The Simpsons, including reruns on the local affiliate)
MTV (Kesha’s show)
ESPN
WGN (this one is debatable, because it’s mostly for Cubs games, and I haven’t had any reason to watch them for several years now.)
CBS (Jeopardy)
local sports channel (MLB baseball)
Cartoon Network (often cartoons are the best thing on TV. I used to watch Discovery, History and so on before they jumped the shark)
CNN (mainly Wolf Blitzer Situation Room, avoid the personalities such as Anderson Cooper)
MeTV (watch occasionally although the selection of shows is rather limited)
Comedy Central (Stewart/Colbert/@midnight)
CNN (National news)
Local Fox (morning news, Sunday animation, Cosmos)
Local CBS (BBT, HIMYM for another week, 2BG)
Fifth channel is hard. I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Who recently, which I never saw before. So I’d probably go with BBC America.