Some genuine icons of the small screen passed away this year. From Dick Clark to Mike Wallace to Andy Griffith to Peter Falk to Jack Klugman to Ernest Borgnine to Larry Hagman to Sherman Hemsley to Don Cornelius, 2012 saw the deaths of some TV titans. The list of TV favorites departing the Earth this year is a long one -- we can't mention all of them -- but we want to make sure nobody forgets about Eugene Polley, who died in May at the age of 96. Polley invented the first wireless TV remote. That's fairly important.

-Daniel Fienberg