Most Emmy-winning shows of each decade, in delicious pie chart form

Note: Sitcom fans may want to check out my "Top 100 Sitcom Episodes of All Time" project.

For your viewing pleasure, and because I didn't realize it would take so long, I've posted below in-living-color representations of the most Emmy-winning shows of TV's first six decades. You can click on each one to embiggen.

I counted the winners of the seven major Emmys on both the comedy and drama side: best series, best lead and supporting actor and actress, best direction, and best writing. The categories were pretty fluid before 1966, but I counted equivalent categories where possible, and I added the sporadic awards for best action, mystery, and western series in the 1950s (when anthology series won all of the "drama" awards).

There are some interesting patterns and changes over the years, which I may explain further if there's interest. Of course, there are often two or three series that get a ridiculous number of awards each decade. Another note: A lot of cheesy series picked up Emmys in the 1960s and 1970s (The Big Valley, Mannix, The Bionic Woman, etc.) because there were so few good roles for women in those years that the bar was pretty low in their acting categories. Thankfully, that hasn't been the case more recently.