oohhboy, most people who felt like you did changed their mid when they actually watched the show and saw how great it was. Everybody is entitled to their opinions though. I hate The Office and Lost (for example), but I know both shows have big followings.
The Transformers franchise was almost dead at the time and this brought it back. They also wanted to differentiate it from the past 2 series, that is why they had the transformers land in prehistoic earth (and since this was before humans had even learned how to talk, they had no choice but to scan animals as their alternate forms. How can you call it terrible CG, especially when it's the same as ReBoot? It may not be state of the art now (although it still looks good), but it was the best thing going at the time.