Imponderable Prompts - Which TV Show from the 70s is Your Favorite? - Part 2

Today, I've "got some 'splanin' to do". Specifically, the process I embarked on the other day to answer the imponderable prompt concerning my favorite TV show from the 70s.  

The aforementioned spreadsheet is still a work in progress somewhat (because I'm a perpetual tweaker [and it's fun]), but it's good enough to start populating some of the fields.  Let's look behind the curtain and delve into the intent behind the design. If you thought my response to my friend's query was overkill, wait to you see the other things I'm compelled to consider...

Let's start with the source of my data.  I had to resort to Wikipedia, which had summaries of American TV shows (including animated ones) that premiered in a given year.  Is it complete?  I don't know, but it's more extensive than any other site I found.  This is how the data is presented:

It gives you a linked alphanumeric list from "0-9" to "Z", where you can navigate to a particular year within a given decade.  Now this is fine for casual searching, but insufficient for my purposes.  What am I going to do, print out each page and handmark notes on them?

So, I copied the data (still maintaining the links) from 1955 through 1993, creating a master list that I turned into a filterable table.  I had to add a "debut year" column to go with the list.  Easy enough when you're cutting and pasting.  Then I used a formula to create a Decade column for the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s (although abbreviated).  

Now I like to use colors in my work for better acuity, but what colors should I use for each decade?  Here's what I came up with (pardon the poor resolution):

'50s:    White text on a grey background to simulate the black and white (B/W) TV shows of that era. 

'60s:    Black text on a blue background, specifically Star Trek uniform blue. 

'70s:    Black text on a yellowish background, specifically the smiley face yellow from the Have a Nice Day CD series.

'80s: White text on a red background, specifically the red Ferrari color from Magnum P.I.

'90s: Burnt Orange text on Chicago Maroon background, the colors of Virginia Tech my alma mater that I was attending in the early 90s.

But wait!  There's more...

I also added a column to represent my subdivision of the Marvel Comics Ages: Golden, Early Silver, Late Silver, Early Bronze, Late Bronze, Copper, and Early Modern.  This concept, still in use today (in my secret storage space), was introduced on this blog back in 2013, using the matching colors, of course.  This way, I can associate a given TV show with the comics that were on the stands at the same time.  

You also get...

I included a rating system from 0 to 5, where I only need to type the number on the keypad to get the following descriptions:

Using Data Validation, I can mark my fields with either an "x" or an "o", depending on the column.  This is the information I'm (currently) trying to capture:

 My friend, John, suggested some broad genre categories (sorry, no colors yet): 

• Comedy
• Drama (crime, medical, family, soap opera, etc.)
• Speculative (Sci Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero, etc.)
• Animated
• Unscripted (documentary, news, game show, etc.)

Lest you think I'm completely insane, we only have to fill in the genres for shows that we actually want to rate.  However, we could filter much more effectively if we include more. Now, I want to actually create a data validation for the sub-genres, so that I could input "Sci Fi" and it would automatically populate "Speculative" in the broad column.  Of course, how do you categorize Dark Shadows?  It would probably just be "Dark Shadows" as it stands unique unto itself under Speculative.

Here's an example of how it all works together (I filtered the year to "1977", so I could manage the list better:

I also want to add a field for Daytime, Afternoon, Primetime, and Saturday Morning time slots.  And as much as I like the debut year format, it would be nice to have a given season for the specific year - that way I could count The Courtship of Eddie's Father as '70s show instead of a '60s - but that would be way too much work.

What's really cool is that we can now get (more accurate) counts on the number of shows by highlighting the rows.

There are 4180 shows in the list, 937 from the '70s.  So we've got our work cut out for us (and I could have been working on the spreadsheet instead of blogging about it [or watching the waning Olympics], but I figured this would be fun post material.)