Decades and decades of seasons

What are DOOL, GH, or SNL? Exploring some emblems of American TV

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DOOL, GH, SNL. Some shows have been running for so long that we know them by their initials. Some have been watched by multiple generations while retaining their legendary hosts or stars over the decades. From fictional daytime dramas to animated families and revolutionary reality shows, let’s explore the productions that have remained uninterruptedly in our living rooms and continue to make history!

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General Hospital holds the Guinness World Record as the longest-running American soap opera in production. Very few fictional shows in the history of television have printed script after script for as many decades. GH premiered in April 1963, which means it has already been running for 61 years.

This daytime soap opera set in the imaginary Port Charles, New York, was created by the husband-and-wife duo Frank and Doris Hursley. The ABC show famously featured the actress Rachel Ames playing Audrey March Hardy for 43 years. The show reached its peak popularity in the 80s, and in 1981, it had 30 million viewers for super-couple Luke and Laura’s wedding, the highest-rated hour in American soap opera history.

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"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." The beloved melodrama was created by the married couple Ted and Betty Corday in 1965, which means it has been running for over 58 years. NBC broadcasted it until 2022, when it moved to its subsidiary platform, Peacock. Situated in the fictional Salem, Illinois, the show rotates around the Brady and Horton families.

Throughout the years, it has pushed boundaries by featuring a same-sex wedding or evil-possession storylines. It was also famously parodied and quoted on the NBC sitcom Friends, which welcomed many guest stars from the soap opera in several episodes.

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This CBS game show first aired in 1972, over 52 years ago. But even then, it was a revival of the old 1956–1965 show of the same name. It is officially the longest-running game show in the US, with over 9,000 episodes behind.

For 35 years, it was hosted by Bob Barker, who was replaced by Drew Carey in 2007. Many special guests appeared in the show, from Buzz Aldrin showcasing a replica spacesuit to Jack Black competing in the game, as well as Aaron Paul, who was a hyped contestant before he became famous for his role in Breaking Bad.

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Y&R was born thanks to the power couple William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, who also created its sister show, The Bold and the Beautiful. Both shows featured crossovers of many characters. Some actors saw their careers jumpstarted by The Young and the Restless, like Eva Longoria, David Michael Hasselhoff, and Paul Walker.

The CBS show first aired in 1973, 51 years ago. Jeanne Cooper famously played the matriarch Katherine Chancellor, and her 40-year tenure on the show is one of the longest in the genre. The show’s iconic song, "Nadia’s Theme", has become an emblem of the soap opera. It was composed by Henry Mancini, also responsible for the brilliant "Pink Panther" theme.

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NBC Saturday Night was the original name when the gem comedy show first aired in 1975. Created and run to this day by Lorne Michaels, the show’s comedy sketches have been parodying contemporary American culture and politics for almost 5 decades.

Each weekly episode features one celebrity guest star as well as a musician or band for the great musical number, who then participate alongside the stationed cast in the week’s sketches. Over its course, the show notably became a platform for introducing endless comedic talents, such as Bill Murray, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Billy Crystal, and Eddie Murphy.

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After 34 years, Fox’s gem show holds several records, like the longest-running American animated series. Matt Groening created the characters of this dysfunctional family after his own, and what started as an odd pilot evolved into an internationally celebrated prime-time show.

It has achieved many strange accolades over the years, from welcoming over 900 stars as guests, including Paul McCartney and Stephen Hawking, to having the original word "D’Oh!" registered by the Oxford English Dictionary, and even gaining a reputation for predicting the future with its storylines.

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Long before YouTube was even a concept, Bob Saget was already hosting America's Funniest Home Videos. Although the conductor has varied over its 700 episodes, it is one of the longest-running reality TV shows in the US, after 34 years.

The show was based on a popular Japanese program with the same concept: Viewers would send funny videos recorded at home, and the host would present them with family-friendly jokes. Since the 80s, this show has understood the hook in user-generated content that would one day flood social media, such as silly footage of pets, funny bloopers, and cute babies.

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Even though it was a spin-off of the 1990 Law & Order, the police drama with Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson eventually became the bigger and longer-running hit. The live-action series has received over 100 award nominations since its release in 1999.

Special Victims Unit is known for having featured impressive guest stars like Sarah Paulson, Robin Williams, and Sharon Stone. Fans were sad to see Christopher Meloni's departure in 2011, whose character, Elliot Stabler, was just as iconic as Detective Benson.

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Another famous animated series on American TV, Family Guy has been running for over 25 years. Seth MacFarlane’s adult show about the quirky Griffins family was launched on January 31, 1999, right after that year’s Super Bowl. The show’s characteristic sense of humor is based on its rapid-fire cutaway gags.

Although the show was canceled once in 2000 and again in 2002, it was the viewers’ fanaticism and the surge of DVD purchases that convinced Fox to continue its production, and as of 2024, new seasons are still being released.

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There was a reality TV boom in the early 2000s, and Survivor is in large part to blame for that. Launched in the year 2000, the show derived from the Swedish version Expedition Robinson, which had been running since 1997.

Hosted by Jeff Probst, Survivor became famous for exploring not just the survival skills of its contestants, but also the group psychology of people challenged by the strain of decision-making under stress. During its first eleven seasons, Survivor was one of the most-watched shows in the country: 51 million people turned on their TVs to watch the first season’s finale.

The human body

The stranger inside: 10 bizarre secrets your body is hiding

Image: Tima Miroshnichenko

From the tiny, unseen creatures residing on your eyelashes to the incredible volume of mucus your nose produces annually, the inner workings of our anatomy are packed with crazy facts that sound like science fiction. Prepare to have your mind blown as we discover 10 of the most astounding, hard-to-believe truths about our very own body. Get ready to never again look at your saliva, bones, or even your earwax in the same way!

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Did you know that about 50% of people have tiny creatures living on their eyelashes? These eyelash mites are about a third of a millimetre long. They can sometimes cause allergic reactions, but most people never find out they’ve got them. We bet you're calling your ophthalmologist for a consult right now!

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Earwax is produced by your body to protect the lining of your ear canal by trapping dirt and repelling water. But what will probably baffle you is that by the time it reaches the outer ear, the wax has been inside your ear for about a month. No wonder it tastes so disgusting!

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You usually only notice snot when you’re making too much of it, that is, when you are sick. But can you guess how much mucus an average person produces in a year? The answer will shock you: about 100 gallons, enough to fill two bathtubs! While the sticky goo is rather unpleasant, you wouldn’t want to go without it. Mucus creates a layer of protection between you and the outside world, so thank God it’s there.

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And what about your saliva? How many bathtubs do you think you can fill with your year's supply? Saliva helps break down and swallow food, fights bacteria, and neutralizes acid, among many benefits. So, if it is that good for you, it’s no surprise your mouth produces tons of it. In fact, it makes between 250 and 730 quarts a year, equivalent to filling a small swimming pool over a lifetime.

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That pink squidgy blob inside your head is stuffed with facts, memories, and dreams. Your brain is constantly crackling with tiny pulses of electricity, performing ten quadrillion calculations per second. They’re brilliantly complicated machines that scientists are only just beginning to understand. One thing is for sure: an average person has 1460 dreams in a year, about four dreams every night, or to put it another way, around the same as the number of miles from Denver to Nashville.

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Clever as your brain is, it wouldn’t be able to do much without the network of nerves that link it to the rest of your body. Nerves bring information from your senses to your brain and deliver orders from your brain to the other organs. As you can imagine, if we were to measure that amazing network, we would end up with a lot. In fact, every person has a whopping 44 miles of nerves running through their skin. Can you imagine?

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The outer layer of your skin is called the epidermis and consists of dead cells that provide protection from dirt and germs. What you probably didn’t know is that your body is constantly losing and replacing these cells. Also, your dead skin cells sometimes absorb water and swell. This is the reason the ends of your fingers go wrinkly in the bath. But don’t worry, the entire surface of your skin is replaced every month.

Want to play some more? How much do you think the average adult’s skin weighs? Just under 7 pounds, or as we like to say, the same as three pineapples!

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Human hair feels soft, but it’s one of the strongest fibres on the planet. The number of hairs on your head ranges from around 9,000 to 140,000, depending on what sort of hair you have.

Everyone loses about 50 to 100 hairs every day, but this process can speed up in men as they get older. Hair generally grows about half an inch a month, or 6 inches a year. Yet, if you don’t cut it regularly, it will most likely stop growing when it’s about 5 feet long.

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This fact is not for skeptics: the average adult’s skeleton weighs the same as one car tyre. In fact, our skeleton only makes up about 15 per cent of our overall body weight. So, next time someone tells you that big bones is the reason for them being overweight, be suspicious.

Another fun fact? Your collarbone is the last of your bones to stop growing when you become an adult. Called the clavicle, it doesn’t stop growing until you’re about twenty-five.

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Human muscles, on the other hand, make up about 40% of your body weight, and there are more than 600 of them. Yet, you use just 200 when you take a step, and almost all of them when you throw a ball.

The biggest muscle in your body is the _gluteus maximus_—a.k.a your bum. The smallest is in your ear, the stapedius, just about forty thousandths of an inch. The jaw muscle is the strongest by force, and the eye muscles are the busiest—10,000 movements an hour when reading! Our favorite muscle, though? The heart, of course!