
The longest-running TV series in the United States is “Meet the Press” by the National Broadcasting Company, which has been aired since November 6, 1947. Since television broadcasts started just a decade before the broadcast of “Meet the Press” began, the show is long-the lasting run is quite significant. The news is also the longest-lived TV series in the world and has a consistently high number of viewers, often beating the competition.
“Guiding Light,” a daytime drama first aired on June 30, 1952, could be considered another competitor for the honor of the longest-running TV series in the United States. The show airs on CBS and has the particularity of being the longest-lived soap opera in the world. “The Price is Right” is another venerable television series that has been airing since 1972, and fans of “The Simpsons” may be pleased to know that the animated comedy is the longest-running animated comedy series in the United States, with an initial air dated December 17, 1989.
Several other American series have had particularly long series, including “Gunsmoke,” “Saturday Night Live,” and “The Tonight Show.” However, the honors of the longest-lived TV series do not belong only to the United States. ‘Sazae-San’, an animated show, has been airing in Japan since 1969, and ‘The Late Late Show’ has been broadcast to Irish viewers since 1962. A Mexican cuisine show, “Hasta La Cocina,” has been on the air since 1962, and “Hockey Night In Canada” has been on since 1952.
The UK also has several particularly long-lived television series that are worth mentioning. ‘Dr Who’ has been broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) since 1963, thus becoming the longest-running science fiction series, and ‘Blue Peter’, a children’s show that aired on the BBC in 1958, also has a very long history on the air. The long history of television broadcasts in both the United States and Britain can be seen by the huge number of American and British shows that tend to dominate the lists of the world’s longest-lived TV series.
Some of these series have thousands of episodes, which makes it extraordinary that they have been on the air for so long. “Meet the Press”, being a news show, has an obvious advantage as there is always a lot of new material to work with, but the staff of comedies, dramas and action shows with scripts definitely deserves some praise for keeping their shows on the air for so long.