How many episodes do the oldest series on the air have ?

I was bored, so I thought I'd look around to find the exact number of episodes of the oldest series currently on the air and then rank them accordingly, just for personal knowledge. Then I decided to post it because maybe I'm not the only one who likes to read this sort of things, if there are some datas fans out here on SpoilerTV.


I thought I wouldn't go lower than approximatively 80 episodes so I restrained myself to 30 shows. I included the name of the show, the channel it is broadcasted on, the number of episodes it has so far, the number of seasons it has so far and the premiere date of the first episode. Then I wrote a series of figures that come up from this information.

Without further ado, here it is :

1. The Simpsons (FOX) : 486 episodes (over 22 seasons starting on December 17th, 1989) + 1 movie.

2. Law & Order - SVU (NBC) : 272 episodes (over 12 seasons, starting on September 20th, 1999).
3. CSI (CBS) : 251 episodes (over 11 seasons, starting on October 6th, 2000).

4. South Park (Comedy Central) : 223 episodes (15 seasons, starting on August 13th, 1997) + 1 movie.
5. CSI - Miami (CBS) : 213 episodes (over 9 seasons, starting on September 23rd, 2002).

6. NCIS (CBS) : 186 episodes (over 8 seasons, starting on September 22th, 2003).
7. Two and a Half Men (CBS) : 177 episodes (over 8 seasons, starting on September 23rd, 2003).
8. One Tree Hill (CW) : 174 episodes (over 8 seasons, starting on September 23rd, 2003).

9. CSI - NY (CBS) : 162 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on September 22nd, 2004).
10. Family Guy (FOX) : 157 episodes (over 9 seasons, starting on January 23rd, 1999) + 4 made for TV movies.
11. Desperate Housewives (ABC) : 157 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on October 3rd, 2004).
12. House (FOX) : 154 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on November 16th, 2004).
13. Grey's Anatomy (ABC) : 148 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on March 27th, 2005).

14. The Office (NBC) : 139 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on March 24th, 2005), including 13 one-hour episodes.
15. Criminal Minds (CBS) : 138 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on September 22nd, 2005).
16. How I Met Your Mother (CBS) : 136 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on September 19th, 2005).
17. Bones (FOX) : 129 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on September 13th, 2005).
18. Supernatural (CW) : 126 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on September 13th, 2005).

19. American Dad (FOX) : 115 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on February 6th, 2005).
20. The Closer (TNT) : 109 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on June 13th, 2005).
21. 30 Rock (NBC) : 103 episodes (over 5 seasons, starting on October 11th, 2006).
22. Futurama (FOX/Comedy Central) : 98 episodes (over 6 seasons, starting on March 28th, 1999) + 4 TV movies.
23. Entourage (HBO) : 96 episodes (over 8 seasons, starting on July 18th, 2004).

24. Rescue Me (FX) : 93 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on July 21th, 2004).
25. Weeds (Showtime) : 89 episodes (over 7 seasons, starting on August 7th, 2005).
26. The Big Bang Theory (CBS) : 87 episodes (over 4 seasons, starting on September 24th, 2007).
27. Gossip Girl (CW) : 87 episodes (over 4 seasons, starting on September 19th, 2007).
28. The Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Family) : 85 episodes (over 4 seasons, starting on July 1st, 2008).
29. Curb your Enthusiasm (HBO) : 80 episodes (over 8 seasons, starting on October 15th, 2000).
30. Psych (USA) : 79 episodes (over 5 seasons, starting on July 7th, 2006).


For the 7 shows in the list on the air this summer (Rescue Me, Entourage, Curb your Enthusiasm, Futurama, Weeds, TSLOTAT and The Closer), I included all the episodes ordered for these seasons even though some haven't aired yet. For South Park, I added 7 episodes to the current total (the second part of season 15 is coming up this October) and I added 18 episodes to The Closer (episode 7.04 will air tonight, all seasons have 15 episodes but TNT ordered an extra 6 episodes for that one).

Among these 30 shows :

- 5 of these shows have more than 200 episodes.
- 20 of these shows have more than 100 episodes.

- 8 of these shows were created before 2003.
- 17 of these shows were created in 2003, 2004 or 2005.
- 5 of these shows were created after 2005.

- 8 of these shows come from CBS.
- 6 of these shows come from FOX.
- 3 of these shows come from the CW.
- 3 of these shows come from NBC.
- 3 of these shows come from ABC.
- 2 of these shows come from HBO.
- 6 basic cable channels (FX, Comedy Central, USA, TNT, ABC Family) all have 1 show in the list.

- 17 of these shows are drama series, and 9 of them are police procedurals (5 of these procedurals are in the top 10).
- 8 of these shows are comedy series (the 2 half-hour dramedies in the list, Weeds and Entourage, are included).
- 5 of these shows are animated series.

- 30 Rock is the only show created less than 5 years ago that already has more than 100 episodes.
- As of March 2012, The Simpsons will be the first scripted series to have more than 500 episodes.

- If we reckon the ratio of episodes per season, to see which series produce the most episodes per season, CSI Miami takes the lead with an average of 23.66 episodes per season, followed by NCIS (23.25 episodes/season), CSI NY (23.14 episodes/season), Criminal Minds (23 episodes/season) and Law & Order SVU (22.81 episodes/season).

- And the other way around, Curb your Enthusiasm comes first (10 episodes/season), then it's Entourage (12 episodes/season), Weeds (12.71 episodes/season), Rescue Me (13.28 episodes/season) and South Park (14.86 episodes/season). That makes sense, because they're cable shows, so here are the 5 network shows in the list which produce the lowest average amount of episodes per season : Futurama with 16.33 episodes/season (I know, season 6 is on Comedy Central now but the first 5 seasons aired on FOX so I include it here), followed by 2 other animated series (Family Guy has an average of 17.44 episodes per season and it's 19.16 episodes/season for American Dad) and 2 NBC sitcoms (The Office with an average of 19.37 episodes per season and 30 Rock with 20.60 episodes/season).