This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Roihu: Does, um, Harry Potter like not count?
Why isn't Frasier on the list?! Graham played the character Frasier for TWENTY YEARS, first in Cheers, then in Frasier. Frasier had 11 seasons itself, (Cheers 9). They even Hung A Lampshade on it in one of the last episodes when Frasier needs to retrieve a signature from a sci-fi convention and meets an actor who asks, "Do you have any idea what it's like to play the same character for twenty years?!"
Red Shoe: Is it just me, or is the distribution of children's shows awfully bimodal? There's tons that last exactly one season, Disney's Three Season Limit, then there's a bunch that last indefinitely.
Gus: Here is how you know it is a Wiki. You get bimodal
in a discussion of children's shows.
Darksasami: How long is long? X-Files looks awfully short next to some of those dinosaurs.
Red Shoe: I wonder if it's not the encroaching of the related trope, "My God, Is That Still On?"
Gus: Actually, TheXFiles is way off the mean. It seems like a long runner because it is the newest show in the list, and newer shows just don't run as long. I will have to number myself among those who think it ran a season or two past its best ideas.
edited to add: Twenty years seems a bit short for Star Trek. It is more like 40, no?
Red Shoe: It's been around for 40 years, yes, but its TV history consists of 3(TOS)+1(TAS)+7(TNG)+7(DS 9)+7(VOY)+4(ENT)=22, plus or minus my not remembering how many seasons DS 9 was on. I think it'd be dishonest to give it full credit for 40 years in comparison to the other shows on the list (This is, incidentally, how Doctor Who fans win fights against Star Trek fans).
Looney Toons: I added Trek and I indeed was guesstimating total years on the air, not time-since-creation.
Red Shoe: As it turns out, by broadcast volume, Star Trek is indeed the longest-running science fiction series ever; it would take 22 days to watch the entire canon compared to just 12 days for all of Doctor Who. See [1].
But The Guiding Light still beats them both at 18 months. I don't have figures for Coronation Street or Sesame Street though.
xwingace:Whovians 'beat' Trekkies on broadcast length because they count all of Old Who as one single show, while Trek technically consists of different shows in the same franchise. Current debate actually seems to go more about Doctor Who versus Stargate SG-1.
arromdee: For Super Sentai, a rough estimate gives 33 years, times 50 episodes a year, times 24 minutes an episode = 27.5 days. 26.7 days if you don't count Spiderman as part of the series.
Cassius335 Which it isn't.
Darksasami: I move for a minimum uptime requirement of one decade. It's a nice clean cutoff point that's hard to argue with.
Looney Toons: Hey, I like nice round powers of ten as much as the next guy. I'll second.
Gus: Done.
Seth: This index doesn't seem to be working, the pages dont link to the next one in line.
Robert: From what's been said elsewhere, I think that's because they all begin with two apostrophes. The indexing only works if the link is the very first thing after the bullet. This needs changing to allow for this index, and maybe other common prefatory text.
Ununnilium: Fixed by de-italicizing.
Ought this page be sorted by run length, rather than alphabetically? I twould be easier to see the really long runners.
Anonymous: You know, there's manga on there so, I can't help but wonder, would Superman count? Action Comics #1 came out in June of 1938, making him just shy of seventy years old.
Neophos: I think Sazae-san should be mentioned. It's (probably) the longest running anime ever, with 10 years on Doraemon (started 1969, 1800+ episodes).
I know this page is about those series "which have passed the test of time," but what about the mass of creatively dead comics in newspapers which have managed to outlive their creator and are basically just marketing engines, like Nancy, Blondie, Dennis the Menace, etc. Frankly, there's too many to list, but any strip that outlives its creator due to syndicate ownership qualifies as a long runner even if it's now a mockery of its former self.
Yoshi348: We need some consistency here on whether the entries should be marked with a) the number of years they've been running or b) their starting year (and ending year, if appropriate). a) seems to have become the standard in the webcomics section, but b) has the major advantage of only needing to be updated when the show stops, as opposed to a) having to be updated at least once a year for shows that haven't stopped (and, technically, on the date the show began to boot, which most people don't even know). In other words, more of the entries swing towards a), but I'd personally think b) is a much better method. It's also easier to handle start-and-stops like Doctor Who and Star Trek.
Lord Incompetent: Cut this because we already have a page for long running webcomics.
- Kevin And Kell (13+ years, ongoing)
- Melonpool (12+ years, ongoing)
- Red Meat (12+ years, ongoing)
- Sabrina Online (12+ years, ongoing)
- User Friendly (11+ years, ongoing, updated daily)
- Faux Pas (11+ years, ongoing)
- Nukees (11+ years, ongoing)
- Goats (11+ years, ongoing)
- Sluggy Freelance (11+ years, updated daily)
- Penny Arcade (Defining Two Gamers on a Couch strip, 10+ years, ongoing)
- Megatokyo (8+ years, still ongoing)
- VG Cats (Not as old as the other strips, 7+ years, ongoing)
And finally...
- Mezzacotta (10,000,000,002,006+ years, updated daily)
Mike: I think Web Comics that have been running for a decade or more should be on this page also (not as a separate section, though).
