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This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

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Marathon Running

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Just another Cartoon Network UK tradition...

This is an event where a network will run multiple episodes of the same show back-to-back for an extended period of time. It can also take the form of running all of the movies in a given franchise back-to-back.

Often done as a promotional event. A popular series will marathon all previous episodes prior to the start of the newest season. The release of a new film in a franchise will be preceded by a marathon showing of all previous films in that franchise. In addition to providing publicity, this gives the audience a chance to get up to speed with events in the show before they jump into the new season. Sometimes, it's also done with really, really popular shows to crank up the overall ratings.

Since the mid-2010s, this practice has become a lot more common as cable networks try to cater to the concept of "binge viewing"; the idea of being able to have your own marathon using video-on-demand services such as Hulu and Netflix.

Sometimes overlaps with Adored by the Network. Not to be confused with actually running a marathon.

Example sub-pages:

Other examples:

  • Fox Kids used to love marathon running for Power Rangers and Digimon. In fact, that was how the American premieres of Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers were set up.
  • Cartoon Network has a long history of marathons pretty much dating back to its foundation.
    • In the mid-90s, Cartoon Network Europe and Latin America did (at least) a full weekend The Flintstones marathon and a FULL WEEK MARATHON of Scooby-Doo.
    • Cartoon Network has frequently marathoned Naruto. One of the most notable examples was the Naruto Hundo, done to celebrate the milestone of Naruto reaching 100 aired episodes on Toonami.
    • For most of 2007-2008, they ran two-episode blocks back-to-back (sometimes advertised as "mini-marathons") in order to burn through Filler.
    • Note that this is only in the present. Cartoon Network and ESPECIALLY Nickelodeon had frequent marathons, almost every night and every Saturday of shows or shows with a vague similar theme before their Network Decay.
    • The channel used to have 48 hours of nothing but Bugs Bunny cartoons in June - "June Bugs". They brought June Bugs back in 2012 and 2013, adding episodes of The Looney Tunes Show into the mix.
    • To ring in 2000, they acquired a 48-hour "Mil-Looney-um" marathon and a 36-hour marathon of The Jetsons.
    • They also had Z Day, a marathon of Dragon Ball Z. This was held twice, in September 1999 with a two-hour marathon, and May 2001, with three hours including two fan-voted episodes.
      • "DBZ20XL" - Nothing but Dragon Ball Z on Toonami for an entire week.
    • Also the annual Cartoon Cartoon Weekend, a full weekend of original series (with a few new surprises).
    • CN was also fond of Pokémon: The Series marathons, the most notable consisting of select episodes of the entire series up to that point as a way to usher in the "Diamond & Pearl" season, with Trivia bumpers in between (such as why Meowth learned to talk).
    • Ed, Edd n Eddy got the Best Day Edder, hosted by series' creator Danny Antonucci, which aired every single episode in a row, all leading up to the Grand Finale, "A Fistful of Ed". However, CN missed one episode and the Made-for-TV Movie only aired in foreign countries at that point, and had smaller marathons aired to lead up to their premieres.
    • For New Years 2009, Cartoon Network aired a Looney Tunes (which hadn't been seen on the network since October 2004) marathon dubbed "Looney Toonormous Marathon". It ran for 14 hours from 6:00am-8:00pm where it was followed by two hours of Total Drama Island before [adult swim] signed on. A shorter version of the marathon that only ran for 11 hours from 8:00am-7:00pm aired the following year only for the shorts to be removed right after.
      • Another marathon, that was simply dubbed "Looney Tunes Marathon", aired on November 15th from 1:00pm-7:00pm to celebrate their return to the regular schedule after being off for 5 years.
    • Cartoon Network Latin America is fond of this too. If you want to talk about New Year's Eve, for example, for three years in a row (during earlier 2000s they went a little step further: 24 hours of Pokémon and one of those years it was 48 hours! Special mention goes to the 2004 New Year's Eve when they not only premiered Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends but also changed their Powerhouse era look into their then-new City look.
    • The BENELUX version of CN had (and maybe still has) a special block on Sundays (that airs every Sunday, not only once a month) called 60. It is a block during which content of one single show would be shown for 5 hours straight (from 8 am to 1 pm), with no pauses in between. As you could guess it became the go to place to see anything that was ever adored by the network. A few shows on that block were Codename: Kids Next Door (which was the most common show to be featured on that block) and George of the Jungle.
    • During Martin Luther King Day weekend of 2018, they held a marathon of The Amazing World of Gumball to celebrate its 200th episode. They also held one on Super Bowl Sunday of 2018, as well as on Christmas Day of the same year.
    • On the day of the 2018 Tonys, an all-day marathon of Clarence and Craig of the Creek ran against it. This was justified though, as they were using the marathon to burn off some of the final episodes of the former show.
    • On July 7th, 2018, which was the day Summer Camp Island premiered, both Cartoon Network and Boomerang played the entire first season for 48 hours straightnote  to hype it up.
    • On September 3, 2018, they played a marathon of fan-favorite Adventure Time episodes followed by the Grand Finale.
    • During Labor Day weekend of 2019, the channel held a marathon of Steven Universe followed by the premiere of Steven Universe: The Movie on September 2.
    • On October 31, 2019, an all-day marathon of Victor and Valentino ran to celebrate Halloween, as well as to celebrate the first day of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead in Spanish) in Mexico. Justified in the case of the latter, as the series is set in Mexico.
    • On Christmas Eve and Day 2019, a marathon of Unikitty! ran all day, to promote 16 new episodes, and in that said marathon, those episodes repeated ad nauseam.
    • On March 27, 2020, a sing-a-long version of Steven Universe: The Movie followed by the first 16 episodes of Steven Universe: Future aired as a lead in to the final four episodes of the series, and of the Steven Universe franchise overall.
    • On April Fools' Day 2020, they ran a marathon of Apple & Onion all day.
    • On April 17, 2020, an all-day marathon of Total Dramarama was run to celebrate the premiere of a new season.
    • On April 22, 2020, a marathon of Craig of the Creek ran to celebrate Earth Day.
    • On May 5, 2020, a marathon of Victor and Valentino ran to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.
    • On June 21, 2020, another all-day marathon of Craig of the Creek ran to celebrate Father's Day, and the premiere of the half-hour episode, "The Other Side: The Tournament". They would do this again in 2021.
    • During Labor Day weekend of 2020, the channel held a marathon of We Bare Bears as a lead in to the premiere of We Bare Bears: The Movie.
    • On Christmas 2020, they ran Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 all day long.
    • On February 28, 2021, another all-day marathon of Craig of the Creek ran to celebrate the last day of the Black History Month.
    • On Labor Day weekend 2021, they aired an all-day Gumball marathon on Sunday the 5th, followed by the network premiere of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
    • Craig aired a 7-hour marathon of episodes 13-40 of Season 4 on October 20, 2021.
      • A marathon consisting of the later Season 2 episodes and the "Capture the Flag" five-parter aired on October 25, 2021 to build up to the Season 4 premiere, "The Legend of the Library".
    • Christmas 2021 saw the network play various movies all day, including three airings of The Wizard of Oz in a row.
  • [adult swim] usually does marathons around holidays, especially in December.
    • There have been marathons of The Venture Brothers, Bleach, Robot Chicken, Metalocalypse, Squidbillies, The Boondocks, Futurama (every episode one after the other, right before its license expired), Family Guy, FLCL, Bob's Burgers, Rick and Morty and even all four Inuyasha movies. An April Fools marathon of Perfect Hair Forever played all seven episodes in backwards order with bad subtitles.
      • Let's not forget the Election Day 2004 marathon, in which they showed the same episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law 24 times in a row.
      • According to the rumors, the Futurama one was a Take That! at Comedy Central, which had just gotten the license - they were attempting to make people sick of it.
    • They aired a Moral Orel marathon on New Year's Eve. Most depressing way to start 2009 ever.
    • As of late March 2020, the network now airs a marathon of one of their shows on Friday nights.
      • One of these marathons, a one for The Boondocks, was significant for airing two episodes of the show on American television for the first time, which were banned after legal threats from BET (as the episode contains several jabs at the network's expense), and one episode that was rarely aired due to Tyler Perry not being pleased with how the crossdresser in the episode was a jab at his Madea routine (this episode also aired when he had two shows on TBS, [as]'s sister network).
      • They aired a Juneteenth marathon from 12:45-4:00am on June 19, 2020 featuring series from Black content creators. This also brought back shows like Black Dynamite and Loiter Squad which hadn't been seen on [adult swim] for a while as well as the usual rerun favorites.
  • Boomerang ran a 24-hour marathon of The Flintstones in September 2010 in honor of the show's 50th anniversary, with the channel being called "Boomerock" for the occasion.
  • Over the Christmas 2007 holiday Britain's Anime Central broadcast marathons of Cowboy Bebop (26 episodes), Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) (51 episodes) and Bleach (the first 52 episodes). Unfortunately this meant that several other shows were cut short before Christmas and not resumed afterward.
  • Prior to the release of Casino Royale (2006), the films of the James Bond franchise were marathoned. In fact, whichever cable channel currently has the rerun rights to the films does this on a fairly regular basis. They were marathoned on TBS and TNT in The '90s to the point that in American Beauty, Lester complains about having to go to the basketball game to watch his daughter in the cheerleading squad because he's missing one of these.
    • In honour of Skyfall and the 50th anniversary of the franchise, the British premium movie service Sky Movies turned an entire channel into Sky Movies 007 in October 2012 (it took a break in November for Sky's annual all-Christmas movies channel, until returning for a time in January 2013), which aired Bond films and documentary features.
  • TNT will often run the same film back-to-back with itself for people that happen upon it part way through.
  • TNT also used to run daily six-hour marathons of Law & Order.
  • For decades, TBS has been known to block out hours at a time to air reruns of favorite sitcoms such as Friends and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on weekdays.
  • Nick at Nite and TV Land used to do these a lot, although lately they've fallen by the wayside due to the dreaded Network Decay.
    • Notable N@N marathons included: "The Dick Van Dyke Show Collection", "The Mary-thon" (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), "Better Living Through Bob" (The Bob Newhart Show), "Bob's B.o.B, Bob Newhart, Newhart Marathon" (featuring all three of Newhart's sitcoms up to that time), and a marathon of all the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes, with a running body count total and contest for the viewer who most closely guesses the final result.
    • Most shows that enter the Nick at Nite schedule are welcomed with a week-long marathon.
    • When Mister Ed left the channel in 1993, it was given a weekend marathon, entitled "Au Revoir Mister Ed".
    • In 1995, Nick at Nite celebrate its 10-year anniversary with a marathon of shows from its 10-year history, inclduing most of the shows that had previously aired. Each show had a special introduction, including facts about the shows run on Nick at Nite, as well as listing how long the shows had aired on the channel.
  • MTV, before Network Decay fully took hold, used to marathon Beavis And Butthead occasionally, dubbing them "Moron-a-Thons".
  • When The Monkees began airing in reruns on pre-Network Decay MTV in February 1986 (The group's 20th anniversary), it was launched by a weekend marathon featuring every Monkees episode. The marathon proved to be so successful, that the Monkees regained an entirely new generation of fans, and Monkeemania was offically reborn. This was followed by several concert tours, a new album (Pool It!), a Spin-Off without any of the original cast (The New Monkees) and a top 20 hit single ("That Was Then, This Is Now").
  • The Discovery Channel once had an "Explosion Sunday" event. It consisted, naturally, of a marathon of Mythbusters.
    • In 2009, Discovery featured one-day each marathons of Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, and Deadliest Catch over the (USA's) Thanksgiving Day and Christmas holiday weekends.
    • Once MythBusters wrapped up its original run and its reruns moved to the Science Channel, Science has run yearly MythBusters marathons between Christmas and New Year's. As a Long Runner, the series has enough episodes to run 24/7 for nearly two weeks.
    • After Grant Imahara passed away from a brain aneurysm in July 14th, 2020, the channel aired a full-day marathon of Mythbusters in July 17th in his honor.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 was famous for its "Turkey Day" marathons during the Comedy Central era, run to commemorate the holiday as well as the anniversary of the show's premiere (which was in fact on Thanksgiving.) Made even cooler with the addition of specially-produced host segments and bumpers to tie the shows together.
  • The Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy) typically airs a Twilight Zone marathon around New Year's Day and other holidays.
    • In previous years, they've run weekend-long marathons of various Godzilla films, and at least one weekend of showing every Planet of the Apes film.
    • They also ran a 13-hour marathon of the 1966-67 series The Green Hornet on Jan 11, 2011 to mark the opening of the Green Hornet movie adaption opening later in the week.
    • The first few years of the channel, the time between Christmas and the New Year would be "Sci-Fi Movie Supernova." Possibly the longest televised marathon, it was a week of non-stop movie broadcasts.
    • They showed a ten-hour marathon of Futurama on Christmas Day 2019.
    • A Merlin marathon always airs before the start of a new season and as a catch up opportunity the day of the season finale.
  • USA Network airs periodic weekend marathons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, combined with weekday airings that remind one of the event. Then there's its "Back-to-back-to-back NCIS" feature every day. It will also frequently run much longer marathons of the same show.
    • Oh admit it, USA will run marathons of anything... and we love when they do.
  • Each day, Turner Classic Movies organizes its prime time lineup around a particular actor, director, genre, or theme. It often organizes daytime programming around such blocks as well. More specific marathons:
    • The "Star of the Month": Over the course of a calendar month, a certain day of the week gets its prime-time-to-the-wee-hours lineup turned over to the films of a particularly prolific performer, resulting in 3-4 weeks worth of marathons in their honor. Some months add additional marathons on other themes elsewhere in the week — a look at portrayals of African-Americans on film over the decades with filmmakers and scholars providing analysis, a similar series covering homosexuality on film, blocks of movie spoofs, etc.
    • On the birthdays of famous actors and directors, Turner Classic Movies plays a marathon of their films either during the day or at night — or both. On what would have been Judy Garlands 90th birthday, they dedicated a full 24 hours to showcasing her films plus a documentary about The Wizard of Oz (her most famous movie). August takes this further with "Summer Under the Stars" — 31 different stars each get a full day's worth of movies. Also, when a particularly notable actor passes away, an evening's prime time lineup will be rescheduled at some point (usually within a week) to run a marathon of their best work.
    • The channel's annual "31 Days of Oscar" feature each February is a month-long supermarathon in which every movie shown was at least nominated for an Oscar of some kind. It's 31 days long because the ceremony, and thus the marathon, used to take place in March; when it was moved back, they kept the number of days and let it bleed into the next month.
    • A few times each year Turner Classic Movies airs "Treasures from the Disney Vault", a marathon block of obscure Walt Disney-era movies, cartoon shorts and TV shows/specials.
    • Thanksgiving Day is given over to an all-day "Family Favorites" marathon (before switching to more mature fare in prime time). Films that are likely to turn up include the Shirley Temple version of Heidi, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Muppets Take Manhattan.
    • For about 20 years, the New Year's Eve prime time lineup was always the three That's Entertainment! Clip Show films followed by the spinoff That's Dancing! in the wee hours of the morning. For December 31st, 2021, they tried something different — running those movies in the afternoon, then featuring the run of The Thin Man series in prime time/late night. The latter, at least, returned to see out 2022. (Back in The '90s, the original run of The Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers held this slot.)
  • Oh, does the Science Channel ever love to run How It's Made for hours on end. They even ran every episode ever aired at the start of February 2011, which took five days to get through.
  • A&E likes to marathon CSI: Miami - a lot. No, check that, they marathon everything. There's practically a Duck Dynasty marathon every other day. Before then, it was Storage Wars.
    • AMC does four episodes in a row per day on the show also.
    • The other shows aren't immune. Spike runs 4 CSI eps a day and TNT runs 3 or 4 CSI: NY eps a day.
  • The TV Guide Channel loved to run Michael Jackson specials a lot after his death, which turned out to be a convenient excuse to throw the network's old management out and launch all-new programming from new owner Lionsgate in the fall.
  • For many years New York station WWOR-TV had a tradition of airing King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young back to back on Thanksgiving Day, followed by several Godzilla films on the day after Thanksgiving (the station's owners, RKO General owned the films from the days RKO was in the movie business, which eventually were passed on to Universal when they bought WWOR).
    • Fellow New York station WPIX used to have their own holiday tradition as well, running 12 to upwards of 25 hours of The Twilight Zone (1959) on Independence Day. They also air marathons of The Honeymooners on weekends and bigger holidays like Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and have taken to airing blocks of ''Friends on Saturday afternoons, as well.
  • Several channels have shown New Years Eve marathons of The Three Stooges, most notably AMC, although the occasional local channel may do it too depending on your area.
  • A few days before Christmas 2011, The Hub ran two mini-marathons of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic in a row, one themed about Discord and consisting of The Return Of Harmony, Part 1 and The Return Of Harmony, Part 2, and another themed about Pinkie Pie, and consisting of Feeling Pinkie Keen and Party Of One, to celebrate those characters having won the Naughty Or Nice contest.
    • The Hub typically runs a "Mare-a-thon" before each season premier, and also ran several for the TV release of EQUESTRIA GIRLS. There was also a Mega Mare-A-Thon in the summer of 2014.
      • When The Hub became Discovery Family, the marathons before season premieres of My Little Pony continued, with the final season's premiere marathon lasting an entire week.
      • From October 7 to 11, 2019, the channel will run My Little Pony for 11 hours straight, followed by an all day marathon on the 12th, which leads up to the Grand Finale.
    • "On the day before Christmas, and then all through the eve, The Hub has a holiday special to see..."
    • The Hub ran marathons for Animaniacs a lot in 2013, with the last being a Pinky and the Brain-themed one.
    • They also ran a Strawberry Bowl during Super Bowl Sunday.
    • Since 2018, the channel will run a week-long marathon of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic from Christmas Eve until New Year's Day.
  • On Dec 31, 2011/Jan 1, 2012 Antenna TV ran "Night of 2012 Laughs", a 20 hour marathon of episodes of The Burns and Allen Show and The Jack Benny Program.
  • TBS airs Family Guy for around four hours every Monday night.
    • They also ran all three Star Wars parodies back-to-back to promote the 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace.
    • During Christmas 2014, they dedicated the whole week's programming to Seth MacFarlane shows.
    • They also had a Seth MacFarlane marathon on Martin Luther King Day 2018.
    • A marathon consisting of twenty episodes handpicked by Seth MacFarlane aired in April 2019 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show.
  • In another pre-Network Decay example, Bravo used to have occasional "Cirque du Soleil Weekends" featuring the shows that had been filmed for TV/video.
  • In mid-2012, at least one PBS station (North Carolina's UNC-TV) ran the entire second season of Downton Abbey in one day.
  • Every groundhog day, one of the Spanish Canal+ film channels (usually Canal+ Comedia) runs a full-day marathon of (as you may have guessed) Groundhog Day.
  • German-Austrian-Swiss channel ''3Sat'' runs a 24-hour pop-music concert marathon every December 31st and every May 1st.
  • FX did an interesting "compare and contrast" marathon with the entirety of the O.J. Simpson season of their American Crime Story airing in marathon form the day ESPN's ten-hour O.J.: Made in America documentary premiered in mid-June 2016.
  • BBC Parliament occasionally devotes an entire day to rerunning coverage of an entire election The last one being the General election of 1974.
  • In its earlier days, Game Show Network loved this trope, especially for holidays.
  • ABC, Disney Channel, and Toon Disney would often run marathons of Recess; heck, the show had a day-long marathon the day Toon Disney started airing it!
    • Around 2003-2004, Disney Channel and Toon Disney usually used any holiday where kids would be off from school as an excuse to play Recess marathons.
    • For Groundhog Day 2001, Toon Disney aired the entire run of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog for the whole day, calling the "Sonic Hog-A-Thon." For a show that Toon Disney was obsessed with promoting every day, this is going to the extreme.
    • Today, Marathon Running is practically the only programming scheduling Disney Channel (and Disney XD) knows. Seriously, look up any given random day (or every day) and it will be 2 hour or more blocks of the same show strung together until primetime hours (which may also have long blocks of the same show strung together especially if it's not a premiere or movie night). This became especially prominent around the time DuckTales (2017) premiered, when the network started to air five hour or more blocks of a show on random days of the week. The most commonly-chosen ones include DuckTales and Phineas and Ferb. In 2020, these blocks were considered a "normal schedule" for the network. In fact, on an average weekend, it's common to see up to eight-hour marathons of a particular show making up most of that day's schedule. Disney XD even ran a week long DuckTales marathon in the leadup to its Grand Finale.
  • To prepare for the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003, Starz ran a 24-hour marathon of the first Lord of the Rings film and the making of featurettes for all three films, capping it off with the television premiere of the second film.
  • ION Television used to air eight hours of reruns of Cold Case on Fridays.
  • LOGO plays about 10 episodes of The Golden Girls back-to-back on Friday nights. Hallmark Channel gives 2-hour block (4 consecutive episodes) both early in the morning and late at night with the same 4 episodes being repeated.
    • LOGO also had a 24-hour marathon of The Rocky Horror Picture Show for Halloween.
    • They also ran many episodes of Will & Grace to promote Sean Hayes' 2013 series Sean Saves the World.
      • Will and Grace, We TV ran five marathons every Saturday from August 19-September 16, 2017, to build up hype for the relaunched series on NBC that fall. Each marathon focused on one of the four main characters, plus one focusing on special guests.
  • BBC America ran marathons of classic episodes of the Doctor Who revival, plus making-of documentaries, in the lead up to The Reveal of who would be playing the Twelfth Doctor. Not long afterward, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" more marathons were run, this time including serials from the classic series.
    • The final third of 2015 saw marathon after marathon by way of capitalizing on Series 9. First was a multi-day marathon leading up to the season premiere "The Magician's Apprentice" (which climaxed with a complete run through of Series 8 plus "Last Christmas" and the special Doctor Who: Earth Conquest). The next day saw a viewer's choice marathon of favorite episodes. October 31st saw a "Wholloween" marathon of extra-scary episodes; the holiday fell on a Saturday that year and happened to be the day "The Zygon Invasion" premiered. The Season Finale "Hell Bent" was preceded by a marathon of all the previous Series 9 episodes. Then another multi-day marathon led into the premiere of the Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song". Finally the madness ended with a "Who Year's Eve" marathon. This was all on top of daily weekday morning reruns of Series 2 through 8, which were further augmented by additional early morning and late night repeats, a Sunday morning block of Tom Baker-era episodes, and a bonus-content laden retrospective of particularly acclaimed/important episodes that ran on Saturday nights in the weeks leading up to the Series 9 premiere.
    • The channel did temporarily suspend weekday reruns of the show over March-July 2016, which may have been due to both simple overexposure and Series 10's pushback to Spring 2017, leaving a drought of new content for the channel to hype until the 2016 Christmas Episode. Not long after the reruns came back, they ran a three-day marathon of assorted episodes with all eleven Christmas specials made up to that point airing in primetime... in August.
    • Shortly after the announcement that Series 11 would premiere on October 7, 2018, the channel announced a 13-day marathon of the entire new series beforehand, starting on September 25.
    • To summarize, the most common times to expect a Doctor Who marathon on BBC America are in the lead-up to a season premiere, the lead-in to a Season Finale (in which case all the previous episodes of the season run in a row), Halloween, and Christmas.
  • For a time, whenever a new season of Degrassi: The Next Generation was about to premiere, Noggin's teen block "The N" played every single episode.
  • Toonami's "A Month of Miyazki" in 2006, which had a new movie every week.
    • TCM did something similar earlier that year — two Studio Ghibli movies each week, in both dubbed and subtitled versions, running through most of the studio's catalog in the process. The only featured film that wasn't shown in a dubbed version was Only Yesterday, which would not receive a proper dub or North American home media release until 2016.
  • Before every season premiere, AMC would run marathons of Breaking Bad covering the series up to that point to get fans caught up. In the week prior to the series finale of Breaking Bad, AMC ran a marathon of the entire series in order, from the first episode right up to the finale itself, over the course of 5 days.
  • The Science Channel regularly gives marathons of Firefly, playing every episode in the correct order rather than their original airing order.
  • In August 2014, FXX aired a marathon of The Simpsons consisting of all 552 episodes of the series and the movie, within a span of 12 days! It was said to be the longest marathon of a single show in America. They subsequently broke that record with a 13 day Thanksgiving 2016 marathon of 600 Simpsons episodes, then broke THAT record in 2019 with a 15 day marathon with every episode from the first 30 seasons (minus "Stark Raving Dad") plus the movie and The Longest Daycare, followed by reairings of the movie and The Longest Daycare, then reruns of the top 11 episodes selected by the show creators based on viewer data from the Simpsons World on-demand servicenote  before closing with a final encore airing of the movie. These marathons were entirely justified as not only does The Simpsons have more than enough episodes to warrant this treatment, but the ratings that the first one brought in for the network were phenomenal.
    • VH1 Classic has since broken FXX's record with their 19 day, 433 Hour-long marathon of Saturday Night Live, celebrating the show's 40th anniversary.
  • Belgian network 2BE airs a marathon block called Fleebitten on Saturdays and Sundays from 7:30 am to 6:00 pm. The one that currently is shown on the marathon is Max Steel (2013).
  • In June 2015, Disney XD ran a 73-hour marathon of every Phineas and Ferb episode leading up to the show's Grand Finale.
  • In the summer of 2015, the local MyNetwork station in New York City loved showing five-hour blocks of the Are We There Yet? TV show.
  • Boy, did Fox Family love Angela Anaconda marathons. One ran on New Year's Day 2000 and another ran on President's Day. They also ran a seven-hour Digimon marathon the same week as the latter one.
    • They also ran an S Club 7 marathon on New Year's Eve in 1999.
  • On September 12, 2015, Disney Junior aired a marathon of all of the Sofia the First episodes and specials that starred the Disney Princesses up to that point, which wrapped up with airings of the Little Einsteins episode "Brothers And Sisters To The Rescue" and the movie Brave to promote the four-part Secret Library episode, which starred Merida.
  • On local Japanese networks, if the broadcast of an anime program that runs in the entire country is delayed on that station for breaking news or sports, the previous and current episodes will be shown in a marathon when regular programming resumes. Shows that were given this treatment have included LBX: Little Battlers eXperience, Lil Pri, HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!!, Yo-kai Watch, Aikatsu Stars! and PriPara.
  • Me-TV loves to air marathons of Superman every weekend before a holiday.
  • Similar to the Sky Movies 007 example, Nick Jr. Too will sometimes become Nick Jr Peppa on holidays, running nothing but Peppa Pig for the entire month.
    • The US Nick Jr. feed ran a Peppa Pig marathon on September 30, 2019 though October 4, 2019, all because of new episodes of the show airing that week.
  • On December 5, 2015, Disney XD ran a marathon of every Koma-san episode of Yo-kai Watch that aired up to that point.
  • In February 2016, Disney XD ran a 68-hour marathon of Gravity Falls leading up to the Grand Finale.
  • The channel Toku HD (which replaced the Funimation Channel) almost completely runs off this trope. For example, one day might have the complete series of Yosuga no Sora and Ladies versus Butlers! broadcast in a row, with a few miscellaneous other anime episodes and live-action films in between these marathons.
  • A Spanish feed of CBeebies, carried by an independent cable provider in Jamaica, New York, aired a marathon of Baby Jake and The Large Family on Christmas Eve of 2016.
  • In an example that was extremely rare for a primetime TV show in first run on one of the Big Four networks, ABC loved airing marathons of The Goldbergs when no new episodes of the show were on, usually at the end of the current season. This lasted until the show went into syndication on Nick at Nite.
    • The first one, which aired in September of 2014, showed the best episodes from season 1.
    • The second one aired during Christmas 2014 and showed a mix of season 1 and season 2 episodes.
    • The third one showed the best episodes from the first three seasons and was followed by a documentary about the show.
    • The fourth one happened on December 21, 2016 and showed four Season 4 episodes: "Breakfast Club", "Stefan King", "The Greatest Musical Ever Written" and "Han Ukkah Solo".
  • From Christmas Eve until Christmas Day of 2016, VH1 aired a 48-hour marathon of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
    • VH-1 also loves airing Space Jam every Thanksgiving.
  • For six years in a row, TBS would run Family Guy marathons the week after Christmas that consisted of every episode ever made up until that point including the Star Wars specials. During some years, episodes of other shows created by Seth MacFarlane would play during the marathon too.
    • In 2016, this marathon was retired, and was replaced by another now-annual tradition: a four-day marathon of three of TBS' original shows: Angie Tribeca, Search Party and The Detour, sandwiched by airings of New Year's Eve. TBS did show a four-hour marathon of Family Guy on New Year's Day, replacing Married... with Children and The King of Queens's timeslots that morning to make up for the absence of the annual marathon.
    • On Christmas Eve of 2019, a Bob's Burgers marathon aired. In a similar vein, the day before, there was a marathon featuring the Christmas episodes of American Dad! and Family Guy.
  • A very common trend on American television networks between Christmas and New Year's is the airing of marathons of shows and/or movies aimed at families with children during daytime hours to entertain the kids who are at home with their parents or families that week. This was more common in the era when cable was not as common as it was now, but some cable networks aimed at adults do this in order to get better ratings during this time period.
    • In 1988, CBS aired an all-morning long marathon of the entire first season of Garfield and Friends.
    • Until The New '10s, ABC aired Disney movies, throwing their perennial New Year's-related animated specials Rudolph's Shiny New Year and Happy New Year, Charlie Brown into the mix.
    • TBS airs family-friendly movies such as The Wizard of Oz and Shrek once their annual marathon finishes, usually on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. From 2005 until 2008, they also aired animated Dr. Seuss specials.
    • FX usually shows a two to three-day marathon of family-oriented movies, beginning on Christmas Eve. During most years, they will show the basic cable premiere of certain animated movies during the marathon each year:
    • WPIX (a NYC-based superstation that's also the city's CW affiliate) sometimes pulls out random children's shows to put on during the mid-morning or middle of the day. For example, in 2010, they showed a Sonic X marathon on a Friday in 2010note , and in 2014, they aired an hour of Rock The Park. note 
    • NBC and This TV would air their Saturday-Morning Cartoon blocks during the afternoon on weekdays during the years they had such blocks. The former has stopped doing this, while the latter still shows family-friendly movies all week.
    • MTV showed Rocko's Modern Life in December of 1998 for this reason.
    • Hallmark Channel actually extends its Christmas movie marathon right to New Year's. This wouldn't be a deliberate example, but since it's Hallmark, it's easily justified.
    • Prior to the Turn of the Millennium, syndicated animated specials would often be played in special blocks during this time as well as Thanksgiving weekend. These included repeats of the Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears specials, along with rejected pilots repackaged as one-off "specials", such as Bubsy, Battletoads and Madballs: Gross Jokes.
    • This also tends to happen on Canadian channels, mainly youth-oriented ones. For example, YTV had a one-off event in 2007 they called "The Marathon of Marathons", spanning from Boxing Day to New Year's Eve. It strung together several marathons of their most popular programming such as Spongebob Squarepants, with a day-long marathon of family-friendly movies squeezed in somewhere. On New Year's Day 2008, it was followed up with a marathon of pilot episodes for the first day of the year.
    • Speaking of Canada, Space also tends to do the "12 Days of Space-mas", which always includes a Doctor Who marathon to lead into the Christmas Episode, and the annual Nicolas Cage-a-thon.
    • New Year's Eve/Day itself gets a LOT of this, besides the ones mentioned earlier on in the page (such as the annual Honeymooners marathons), WLNY has marathoned The Odd Couple for the past few years. On New Year's Eve 2016, TV One ran a Good Times marathon, and COZI TV ran Starsky & Hutch all day (following it up with a Columbo New Year's Day marathon), while Comedy Central rang in 2017 with Drunk History. On the movie front, Esquire ran a marathon of James Bond films, while Pop, TNT, TBS and Freeform were among the other networks running various movies on January 1.
    • Food Network constantly shows blocks of Cake Wars, a show whose episodes mainly focus on people creating cakes out of properties aimed at children, on weekday evenings during the month of December. They also will have a big marathon of Cake Wars on one day during the Christmas to New Year's Eve week, a tradition that has been going on since its predecessor Challenge premiered.
    • The "adult channels running family and children's programming and movies" example also happens around the Easter/Passover season. For example, TBS showed several Disney movies in 2019, including College Road Trip, Underdog and Cinderella.
  • Memorial Day is another popular excuse to run marathons. For example, Antenna TV in 2017 unofficially kicked off the summer by running a marathon of the entirety of Gidget, which they dubbed the "Summer & Surf Gidget Marathon". Also, Sundance TV fittingly ran a M*A*S*H marathon running into the next day, while TV One ran an Empire marathon.
    • Speaking of M*A*S*H*, the show was a syndication darling for a number of networks, most notably FX in the late 90's/early 2000's and the Hallmark Channel after that. Both would frequent hold whole weekend marathons where they'd show the entire series from start to finish.
  • PBS affiliate WETA commonly ran marathons of PBS Kids shows on holidays in the late 90's and early 2000's. On the day of Thanksgiving in 1999, they ran a marathon of Arthur, and during one day of Christmas break in 2000, they ran one of Dragon Tales.
    • Speaking of Arthur, a two-hour marathon of it and Postcards From Buster called the "Arthur and Buster Thanksgiving Spectacular" aired on Thanksgiving Day 2005. New linking footage aired between each episode.
    • PBS in general also does this for their pledge drives, running multiple episodes of a certain show based on whatever thank-you gifts they decide to use to attract viewers to make a donation, though in The '90s the practice drew some ire among parents who feared that PBS was selling out. Some of the shows that have received this type of marathon include Sesame Street, Barney & Friends, Lamb Chop's Play-Along, Teletubbies, Arthur, The Noddy Shop, Theodore Tugboat and Dragon Tales.
    • They also tend to do this with their PBS Kids Family Night block, where the movie or special in question is usually followed by a marathon of episodes from the show the movie is based on. For example, whenever D.W. And The Beastly Birthday airs, it's followed by two hours of Arthur. If it's something like The Gruffalo that isn't based on a PBS Kids show, they'll play a marathon of an older show like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Sid the Science Kid or The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! (with the latter being the most frequently shown). And on some occasions when they don't feel like showing a movie (usually when a show has new episodes that week), the whole block that evening will be a marathon of one particular show.
    • From December 1997 to January 1998, several PBS stations, including WETA, ran late-night marathons of Shining Time Station as a way for parents to record episodes before PBS pulled the show from its schedule.
    • From February 16th to February 21, 2022, a marathon of every single Arthur episode ever made note  aired on the PBS Kids channel to lead into the airing of the final episodes of the series.
    • The day Dragon Tales premiered, some affiliates, including Iowa Public Television, ran a mini-marathon of the show that lasted until noon, showing several episodes of the series.
    • On September 3, 2022, PBS Kids ran a marathon of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood featuring the top 10 fan-voted episodes.
  • On Thanksgiving of 1995, local TV stations (with one of them being WBNX) ran a marathon comprised of eight Sailor Moon episodes, surrounded by live-action inserts of Tia Browsh dressed up as Sailor Moon.
  • On February 4, 2018, Freeform ran an all-day marathon of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the film's nationwide release.
    • On the topic of Freeform, they love to show Toy Story marathons as part of 25 Days Of Christmas during the second weekend of December, a tradition which has happened since the channel was ABC Family. This marathon usually gets high ratings for the channel, so it's justified.
  • On July 14th, 2018, FX ran nothing but the first two Hotel Transylvania movies to promote the release of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. They would later do the same thing on December 23, 2018 with all 7 Transformers movies to promote Bumblebee, right before their annual DreamWorks Animation marathon.
  • Sometimes, networks will use this trope to honor recently-passed celebrities:
    • On December 23, 2018, MeTV ran a marathon of Laverne & Shirley to honor the recent passing of Penny Marshall. All the episodes aired were picked by her a few years before her death.
    • PBS Kids Sprout showed a marathon of The Berenstain Bears to pay tribute to Stan Berenstain, and when George Carlin died in 2008, they ran a Thomas & Friends marathon in his memory.
    • NBC ran a marathon of Camp Candy on a Saturday in March 1994 (the first time they had aired cartoons in two years) to pay tribute to John Candy.
    • In 2018, Logo ran a marathon of The Facts of Life in honor of Charlotte Rae.
    • On April 21, 2018, Laff TV held an "All Rise for Harry" marathon of Night Court in honor of star Harry Anderson, who died earlier in the week of the flu at the age of 65.
    • TLC decided to run a marathon of Cake Boss leading up to its tenth season premiere, which was a tribute to Buddy's mother, Mary, and featured her memorial service. Several of the episodes featured in the marathon focus on Mary, but a portion of most episodes of Cake Boss is devoted to Buddy's family, anyway.
    • On Labor Day 2017, the subchannel "Movies" ran a marathon of Jerry Lewis films under the title "Jerry Lewis Icon-A-Thon", to honor the actor, who had died not long before. Perhaps not coincidentally, Labor Day is when Lewis always did his telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
    • Turner Classic Movies typically runs marathons dedicated to a prominent film personality when they die, such as Lauren Bacall, Burt Reynolds, and Doris Day. They also usually run a marathon of films in December involving multiple prominent actors/directors/etc. who had died during the year.
    • Many channels paid tribute to Betty White by running marathons of shows she starred in the first few days of 2022:
      • On January 1-2, 2022, TV Land aired an all-weekend marathon of The Golden Girls to honor the passing of Betty White mostly consisting of episodes featuring White's character Rose. As this was a last-minute schedule change, it didn't show up on most TV guides.
      • The weekend of Betty White's passing, CMT aired a marathon of The Golden Girls episodes focusing on Rose. A bumper aired between episodes mourning White and sending wishes to her family, friends, and fans.
      • On January 8, 2022, Game Show Network and Buzzr both aired marathons of Match Game episodes starring Betty White.
      • The Film Detective channel showed a marathon of her first sitcom, Life with Elizabeth, on January 17th, which would have been her 100th birthday.
      • Decades aired a marathon of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on January 8, 2022, preceeded by Betty White's roast of Dean Martin.
      • Local channel DTC3 aired a marathon of Life with Elizabeth and Date with the Angels on January 8, 2022.
    • Following Matthew Perry's fatal drowning in October 2023, several networks ran marathons of Friends in memory of him, including Nick At Nite, TBS, French channel TFX and a channel in Italy.
  • Every single episode of Pirate Express was aired in a single week, with many episodes airing each day.
  • Another popular excuse to air marathons is snowstorms, with channels adding a few extra episodes of their most popular show to entertain people who are trapped inside their homes. Some examples include USA Network scheduling a marathon of Law & Order: SVU at the same time as a Northeastern snowstorm in February of 2010, and a rather infamous marathon of Teen Titans Go! that aired during a late-season snowstorm in March of 2018.
  • Some seasons of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf air really quickly due to their popularity. For example, The Athletic Carousel aired 60 episodes within the span of only four days.
  • Sometimes radio stations do this trope, playing several blocks of songs tied into a certain theme:
    • Long Island radio station WALK 97.5 used to broadcast an all-80s music weekend in the 2000's around Memorial Day weekend. They also used to have a block called Backtrax USA that served the same purpose on weekend evenings.
    • On the weekend of Kevin Meaney's death, XM station Raw Dog Comedy played a marathon of several of his routines during the evening hours.
    • Kids' Place Live has a block called Couch Potato Stew, which is basically a marathon block of songs from movies and TV shows (and beginning at the end of The New '10s, viral Internet hits like Parry Gripp and Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, but these songs aren't as common as the ones from movies and television). In the early years of the block, celebrities would occasionally be interviewed.
    • Many Oldies stations over the years have aired a "Memorial Day 500" countdown over the long weekend, playing 500 songs, with rankings usually determined by some kind of listener survey.
      • In 2019, Sirius XM's indie station, XMU, did this sort of thing, dubbing it the "Indie 500". The next year, they expanded on their "Old School" block by dedicating the entire Memorial Day weekend to playing songs that were at least ten years old. In 2021, the weekend had multiple "Memory Blocks" dedicated to songs from a certain year (e.g. 2003, 2018).
    • WXPN in Philadelphia celebrated the 50th anniversary of Woodstock in 2019 by airing the entire three-day concert, with each artist's set starting at the exact same date and time that it had been performed in 1969.
    • Sirius XM's Disney Hits radio station runs a block called Extra Magic Hours, which are marathon blocks of Disney songs with a certain theme to them at least once a day. Themes have included Disney Princess songs, villian songs, Marvel songs, songs from Beauty and the Beast, songs from Frozen, songs from Broadway adaptations of Disney films, songs from the Disney Theme Parks, The Muppets songs (to promote Muppets Haunted Mansion), Halloween songs, Christmas songs and Disney songs that were nominated for awards. They've even used the Extra Magic Hours block to promote films on Disney+, such as Better Nate Than Ever and Sneakerella.
    • When CFDV-FM in Red Deer, Alberta, was called 106.7 The Drive, they aired "Nothing but 90's" long weekends. In 2020, this was replaced with the airing of a few live music tracks every hour on long weekends before the station rebranded as 106.7 Rewind Radio on December 4 of that year.
  • From 1997 to 1999, the cable industry held an event called Tune In To Kids and Family Week, where every cable network had to air at least two hours of kid-friendly programming to promote cable-viewing among families, which would later be cut down to a half hour of programming). During this time, many networks played marathons of family-friendly shows and movies. For kid-oriented networks, they would either show movies or marathons of their programming.
  • On August 9, 2019, the day that Dora and the Lost City of Gold debuted in theaters, the Nick Jr. channel ran an all-day Dora the Explorer marathon, which also contained the premiere of the show's Grand Finale, the latter of which was also simulcast on the main Nick channel in the midst of their weekly Friday PAW Patrol marathon.
  • Cartoonito, a UK preschool channel, schedules Fireman Sam in blocks that last anywhere from 4 to 11 hours long each day.
  • Universal Kids went through a phase where they aired an 8-hour long marathon block of Masha and the Bear at least once a week.
    • From July 20 to 24, 2020, the channel aired Masha for 24 hours a day.
  • UK Game Show Challenge likes giving this treatment to their shows on major holidays.
  • The original three Jurassic Park movies have frequently been run in this manner in the U.S., but it became especially common to schedule them all in a row from 2019 onward, a time when the package was circulating through multiple networks (TBS/TNT, Freeform, Syfy, etc.). About every other weekend into early 2020, somebody was programming Jurassic Park marathons on basic cable.
  • On Bank Holiday Monday in August of 2002 and 2003, CBeebies had an all-day Tweenies marathon titled the Tweenies Funday. This is one of the rare occasions where CBeebies has had a marathon of one show on their channel.
  • On Mother's Day of 2021, E! ran a marathon of Modern Family.
  • On May 1, 2021, Disney Channel ran a "Halfway To Halloween" marathon consisting of Halloween-themed movies and episodes of their programs.
  • Over Memorial Day weekend in 2021, multicast network TBD ran a Wipeout marathon.
  • On May 19 to 20, 2022, Disney XD aired all 65 episodes of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers for the first time in a two day marathon to promote the release of the 2022 live-action/CGI hybrid film loosely based on the series. This was the first time the show had aired on American television since August 2008.
  • On July 4, 1998, Kids' WB! ran a marathon of the top fan-voted Animaniacs episodes titled Animaniacs Attack!.
  • On June 21, 2022, for National Indigenous Peoples Day, the CBC Kids block ran a marathon of Molly of Denali.
  • To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Bluey, on November 19, 2023, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran a marathon called "Blueyfest", showcasing the top 100 episodes as voted by fans.
  • On January 1, 2024, Tokyo MX ran a marathon of Zatch Bell! to promote the then-upcoming app "Eien no Kizuna no Nakamatachi" and to celebrate New Year's.

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