Down here in the Entertainment Weekly TV Bunker -- a space the size of a small dorm room stuffed with TVs, VCRs, videocassette tapes, and an embarrassing number of empty Diet Coke cans and Snickers bar wrappers -- we are busy beavering away at the 100 Most Memorable Moments in Television issue that'll hit your newsstand on Feb. 19. Taking a breather from my labors on this project, I clicked onto EW Online's message boards to check out your votes for your "all-time favorite TV personality," and I've gotta say, you EW-ites make me proud. The range -- from Lucille Ball to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"'s Sarah Michelle Geller -- is impressive, as are the surprises (two votes for John Ritter!) and the wit (Homer Simpson -- great pick!).

But looking at the reader selections thus far, and being immersed in the study of TV history as we assemble our Memorable Moments issue, I want to goad you all a little. Like, where's the groundswell for Johnny Carson or David Letterman, guys who've entered millions of bedrooms for years, providing us with some of our most genially intimate, off-the-cuff entertainment? Along the same line, I also wonder, are any of you out there old enough to remember Steve Allen or Jack Paar or Dick Cavett, late-night hosts who were revered for their witty TV personalities in their respective days? (Vote for your favorite TV stars and shows in our Fab 100 Online Poll.)

I think you could make an argument that the most influential TV personality ever was Ernie Kovacs, since his '50s experiments with TV technology -- surreal sight gags, monkeying around with the camera -- resound even to this day. But is the thing that makes TV so continually exciting -- its immediacy, its sense of the NOW -- also what gives us short-term memory loss, able only to summon up the most recent pleasures we've taken from stars in shows like "ER," "Buffy," the various "Star Trek" series, and "The Simpsons"? And when we ask you for a favorite TV personality, do you think of a real-life person (a host, a news reporter, an actor) or the role an actor played? In other words, who's more important to TV history, Walter Cronkite or Archie Bunker?

Think about it. Get back to us. We're here in the bunker, working for you, on a sugar rush.

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