The Simpsons overtakes Gunsmoke as America's longest-running scripted TV show

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/30/the-simpsons-overtakes-gunsmok.html

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Although if you’re going to count the radio shows of Gunsmoke you should also count the shorts of the Simpson family on The Tracy Ullman Show.

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Have Gunsmoke scholars also been known to remark on a precipitous decline in the quality of the show during certain segments of its run?

I suppose there must be some people still watching The Simpsons, but it must surely be only out of thoroughly ingrained habit.

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How are soap operas counted on this? I mean General Hospital is still going at like 2500 episodes…

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The headline and writeup leave out the word “prime time”. Of course soap operas hold all of the world titles for number of episodes and number of hours, but they’re for the womenfolk, air in the early afternoon, and thus do not count in the manly male practice of measuring whose evening show is longest/biggest/mostest.

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I stopped watching the show when i was in high school. At this point that’s almost 20 years ago. It seemed pretty stale back then, and still have no interest in ever watching it again.

Came to see the complaints about decline and staleness. Predictably not disappointed. Simpsons related comment threads are similarly stale and in significant decline.

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Worst series EVER!

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Britain does it right, 7-8 in the evening is the traditional time for soaps here.

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

On 17 September 2010, it became the world’s longest-running television soap opera and was listed in Guinness World Records.

It has also helped a lot with trans rights, when they introduced Hayley Cropper back in the 1990s.

That’s great! Can they please stop now?

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Guys I hate to say this but I’m not entirely convinced all those episodes starred the same dog.

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As are comments about Simpsons comments, as well as this comment about your comment. Nothing is funny anymore and we’re all just waiting for the sweet release of death.

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Gunsmoke or The Simpsons :slight_smile:

Lol Simpsons for sure

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It was actually an OK episode for once, so that’s good.

That’s okay, the Simpsons had more than one “Snowball”

The recent widespread enthusiasm for “steamed hams” and projects like https://twitter.com/simpsonsfilms or http://www.darksimpsons.com/ are kind of fresh.

I liked Matt Groening from “Life In Hell”. When the Simpsons became popular, I wanted to watch, but didn’t own a TV. At some point I had missed so many episodes, I stopped trying. My theory was that I’d be old and infirm some day, and instead of sitting around watching re-runs, I’d get to watch all the episodes fresh. Somehow I hadn’t planned on so many decades of infirmity.

I might be dating myself but i remember catching The Simpsons back when it was a part of the Tracy Ullman Show, and i was a fan of The Simpsons up to something like season 5 or so and then after that i felt like it was more of the same and i moved on. And they’re still going.

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