The first round of voting on what TV Characters and TV shows will enter the May Madness V tournament was wrought with complications.

First was my own scheduling, which saw me not get the voting groups out till late in the 3rd week of the month, almost a whole week later than last years.

Follow that up, once the groups were up, I was unable to log in to my twitter account for my awards & May Madness event updates. A glitch in twitters code was leaving me logged in on my Main twitter account. The issue was not resolved till (after 4 tweets, and 3 emails to them) 6 days later, on the day that originally I had the polls scheduled to close.

With that hiccup finally out of the way, I decided to extend the deadline for 2.5 days. Only to have another issue come up immediately after that. For reasons I still don't know, my tweets on my awards/May Madness update account were not showing up in general searches. It seemed the only way to SEE those tweets would me if you were already 1 of the 865 followers of my account. No new viewers would see them unless someone else retweeted them, or they by sheer fluke found my account. That issue lasted for about a day.... leaving really only about a day & 1/2 of an 8 day opening poll that the highest traffic source for these polls, twitter, was accessible to the rest of the world.

This of course led to some pretty low scores with some probably contenders finding themselves on the outside this year as their fans didn't get much chance to take part. because of the sheer twitter fuck up pile, I made the final group, albeit with limited spots, a bit more inclusive than I originally expected to.

Below is a list of winners from the first group, all whom have advanced to the May Madness V tournament that will start in early May.
To see the list of those who had automatic spots before the polls, see the list HERE

The Rules to nominate a candidate.

TV Characters
- Maximum Eight (8) spots will be given to any specific show.
- Character must have been in an episode on or after May 1, 2015 and before April 18, 2016
- You must provide TV Character name, and program for nomination to be eligible.
- You can nominate someone thru here, twitter, facebook, tumblr or tsu through the valid rules stated below.

TV Programs
- Maximum Sixteen (16) spots will be given to any specific Network
- Programs must have aired at least 1 new episode on or after May 1, 2015 & before April 18, 2015
- You must provide the shows Complete title, acronyms will not be accepted (ex - "How I Met Your Mother" - correct, "HIMYM" - Incorrect)
- You can nominate someone thru here, twitter, facebook, tumblr or tsu through the valid rules stated below.
- Reality TV shows are not eligible. Talk/news shows ARE eligible.

UNLIKE the BOTVAs, the amount of nominations may be the difference between getting in and not, so feel free to nominate someone already chosen, but
DO NOT nominate candidates already guaranteed spots. DO NOT judge comments on this post as the be all end all of total nominations stated. Nominations will also be counted thru facebook, twitter, tumblr and tsu as well.

To nominate on
- Twitter. Reply to this post for TV Characters, Reply to this post for TV Programs. You can add more than 1 nomination to a tweet.... long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles fitting into it.
- Facebook. Reply to this post for TV Characters, and Reply to this post for TV Programs. You can put more than 1 nomination in your post, long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles on them.

Nominations end April 18th, 2015 (may be extended due to schedule on/around that date).

The 2015 May Madness Champion for Favorite TV Show is
ORPHAN BLACK
(BBC America)

In a year where upsets were the norm, Orphan Black  managed to outlast all its challengers to become the May Madness champion with a 364-194 win over Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the finals.

In its 3rd season now, Orphan Black has had a lot of awards and honours placed on it (including Best New Program here in 2013), the shows lead Tatiana Maslany winning a several notable acting awards, including a Critics Choice Award, as well as the show itself being nominated for several notable awards. With the backing of the shows fans, known as the "Clone Club" the show grew their fanbase throughout the tournament and  went from being a "probably afterthought" to contender".

With a victory of only 31-9 over Rizzoli And Isles in round 1 there was little sign early on of the potential for a win from the show. Again, in round 2 Orphan Black didn't look too poised to win this year as it narrowly escaped being eliminated right there & then with a 46-44 win over rookie show Agent Carter. In round 3 however, Orphan Black made much more of a statement, as it crushed the highly popular The Walking Dead 234-104 in a very mild upset, this was also the 2nd highest vote total in that round. By round 4 the show was turning into a threat as it beat Agents Of SHIELD 330-222 and in turn had the 2nd highest vote total of the round for the 2nd round in a row. Orphan Black put its biggest shocker in  round 5 when they managed to upset Person of Interest, the show that had the top vote total 3 of the 1st 4 rounds prior 617-548.

The runner up Brooklyn Nine-Nine also had a more than unexpected run to the finals. With a mere 22-9 win in round 1 over Family Guy, like the champ, it didn't look like the 99 was going to go far this year. Brooklyn 99 got thru round 2 with a 20-16 win over How To Get Away With Murder, that was the 2nd lowest winning vote total of the round. In round 3 a 170-110 win over The Big Bang Theory started to show that the show had hopes of going far in the tournament. Like the winner, Brooklyn Nine-Nines race to the finals was almost derailed in a round with a narrow 1 point win 220-219 over Game Of Thrones in 1 of the larger upsets of the tournament. the 99 came from 77 votes down in the final 8 hours to make that happen.  The show that refused to quit managed 1 more notable upset in round 5 over Once Upon A Time with s 528-248 score to advance to the finals  This is the first finals appearance in May Madness for a sitcom. The Big Bang Theory made the semi-finals 2 years ago as the furthest a sitcom had advanced previously.

This is the 2nd Honour for Orphan Black, as they won the 2013 Best Of TV Awards title of Best New Program. 

You can see the entire tournament results HERE

The 2015 May Madness Champion for Favorite TV Character is
SAMANTHA GROVES/ROOT
(portrayed by Amy Acker)
"Person of Interest"

In a year where upsets were the norm, the Amy Acker portrayed Samantha Groves, aka Root, from Person of Interest managed to outlast all its challengers to become the May Madness Champion with a 2099-354 win over Auggie Anderson "Covert Affairs".

it was an interesting year for bad girl who does good things sociopath we all know as Root. She had more than a couple run ins with dangerous people, she developed an almost obsessive crush on 1 of her partners, which at times was problematic for the rest of her team as she went on a 1 woman crusade to save Shaw, and got to generate a lot of havoc.

The win seemed to be generated by the voices of many of the Person Of Interest fans. In recent weeks, with the announcement that their favorite show is not getting a full season order from CBS, the fans have become organized, and vocal on trying to get the stations attention. My honour is not the only one the group that in some circles call themselves the "irrelevants" (an ode to what regular people are called in the show.. and ironically named in light of what CBS has done to the show) has won recently. On SpoilerTV, the show dominated their season end awards as well recently.
 
With victories over Regina Mills/Evil Queen "Once Upon A Time" in round 1 by a score of 264-153, and a run of wins over her own team in rounds 2, 3 and 4 over Harold Finch, Sameen Shaw and John Reese , and finally over "The Blacklist" Raymond Reddington in  round 5 by a score of 760-626, she went into the finals as the most voted challenger in this years tournament in either category.

The runner up Auggie Anderson "Covert Affairs" (portrayed by 2014 Best Of TV Award Best Drama Actor winner - Christopher Gorham)  also had a more than unexpected run to the finals. While he was the favorite in rounds 1 & 2 with wins over Melinda May "Agents Of SHIELD" & Selina Kyle "Gotham", he continued on with wins in round 3 over Sheldon Cooper "The Big Bang Theory" and the 2013 May Madness winner Dean Winchester "Supernatural" in round 4. In  round 5, a win over Bo Dennis "Lost Girl" put him into the finals   

This is the 1st Honour of any type for Samantha Groves/Root, Amy Acker, or the show "Person Of Interest" here.

You can see the entire tournament results HERE