2026 Fall TV Endurance Champs

  I used to extensively preview the Fall TV schedule, with a separate blog post for each day of the week.

Those days are gone.

TV is way too diffuse now. With streaming services and new shows being introduced year-round, it's hard to organize a real preview.

So, this year, I want to note which broadcast TV shows are endurance winners - those TV shows that have been on the air for the most seasons.

Breaking down by category:

SPORTS

1) Monday Night Football            37 Seasons

Reality Competitions

1) Survivor                                       51 Seasons

2) The Amazing Race                      39 Seasons

3) Dancing With the Stars              35 Seasons

Many of the shows benefit from presenting more than one season per year. Our household favorite has been The Amazing Race. Over the years, Alison and I have gone from "maybe we should enter" to "well, we couldn't do that challenge" to "maybe we could just go along and help host Phil with the craft table."

News/True Crime

  1) 60 Minutes                            59 Seasons

  2) 20/20                                      50 Seasons

  3) 48 Hours                               40 Seasons

This category includes true crime because these shows USED to be investigative journalism, but they are now focusing more and more on lurid true-crime stories. The last holdout was 60 Minutes, which recently had to bow to the Fascist-In-Chief and their MAGA-friendly corporate overlords. Investigative journalism is a fundamental part of true democracy and freedom, and it is hard to see it disappearing.

2026 Update: The takeover of 60 Minutes by far-right extremists renders it useless as having any reliable investigative journalism content. It's hard to justify calling it Season 59 this year, since it no longer exists in any recognizable form.

Animated

1) The Simpsons                         38 Seasons

2) Family Guy                            24 Seasons

3) Bob's Burgers                        17 Seasons

Animated programs can show a lot of endurance, as the "actors" don't age, nor demand phat new contracts.

It may be the harbinger of things to come, as we may soon see "AI actors."

Bob's Burgers and The Family Guy are not on the Fall Schedule, but are not canceled, and will have new seasons in the Winter. Because of that, I am keeping them on the list.

Scripted

1) Law & Order: SVU                           28 Seasons

2) Law & Order                                     26 Seasons

3) NCIS                                                   24 Seasons

4) Grey's Anatomy                                 23 Seasons

5) Chicago Fire                                       15 Seasons

It's interesting that Law& Order: SVU has more seasons than the mothership that spawned it, Law & Order. That's in part because it was returned in what is one of the most popular ways to preserve scripted television - the theme night. An entire evening centered on related shows. The Chicago Wednesday night and the Law & Order Thursday are current prime examples. There have also been nights centered around NCIS and 9-1-1. The truly unique shows are getting smaller and smaller space.

The structure of these shows allows them to survive cast changes, as the shows are centered on themes rather than personalities. Special shoutout to Mariska Hargitay for being in all 602 episodes of Law & Order: SVU.

I don't watch any of these shows. We did watch the original CSI program set in Las Vegas, but it, alas, is now gone.

At one time, maybe back in the 90s, I watched some episodes of Law & Order. But they were hard to keep straight. I'd have one on for about a minute, and Alison would say, "Tom, you've already seen that one"

We do watch Ghosts (Season 6), Matlock (Season 3), and The Rookie (Season 9), all of which do not premiere until 2027. We have watched Elsbeth (Season 4), but I'm not sure we'll continue. She knows who did it far too early, and saps some of the fun out of it. We watch some of the reality competitions.

The CW is omitted because it has fallen into obscurity and has not reported much yet. Penn & Teller: Fool Us may soon start their 13th season.

The CW, in general, is completely off my radar since they stopped the Arrowverse/DC superhero shows.

In general, the decline of scripted shows on broadcast TV continues. Only 34% of primetime hours are now scripted (including animated shows). Last year was 46%. That may not mean a whole lot to most of you, but as part of Generation Late Boomer (now called Generation Jones), I miss that wonderful plethora of primetime scripted shows, everything from the absurdity of My Mother the Car, to the wonders of Star Trek: from the sharp social comedies like All in the Family, to the weirdness of The Addams Family; from the jiggling detectives of Charlie's Angels, to the place with the highest murder rate in the world, Cabot Cove of Murder She Wrote.

Oh, well. I'll look forward to the next episode of Lanterns on HBO Max (or whatever it's called now).