Im thinking about in all the ways even streaming now. Im thinking before streaming the stooges would be a good contender. Was shown in movied theaters and had reruns going all the time on so many different channels. Its a wonder life used to be spammed in november and december before the ip was taken back out of public domain.
EDITING. Im thinking more about the same thing being rebroadcast I think which is why I was thinking its a wonderful life to. So like there are only so many stooges and they get replayed a lot as opposed to like the simpsons or doctor who running for a whole bunch of seasons.
Ok, I’m going to approach this literally how you asked it. That is to say “shown the most”, not “watched the most”. So if it gets shown, to an audience of 0, it still counts.
I’m also only going to count places showing this commercially. So, not counting retirement homes playing a dvd all day on repeat.
So, with that in mind, I’m not going to say “the simpsons season 4, episode 6”. I would instead just say the simpsons. Movies are counted individually. So the simpsons may have like 800 episodes. But it’s all counted together. Whereas the 45 fast and furious movies are counted not as a series, but individually.
Ok, with that out of the way…
You’d think I love lucy would be a great contender. However theres a few issues with this. Firstly, Lucy had many similarly named shows. I Love Lucy is the main one, but there was also The Lucy Show, The Lucy and Desi Variety Hour. Probably a few others that escape my mind. And each series would be seperate. The OTHER issue, is that Lucy was popular in the 1950s. Meaning the baby boomers were a combination of anywhere between 15 years old, and not born yet. Meaning the population boom that drove television wasn’t yet old enough to drive the industry just yet.
So my thought would be you need a show that the boomers would watch, and could later be put on repeat on channels endlessly. With a large enough list of episodes that they could put on all day every day.
The first thing that pops off in my mind is Cheers. However, Cheers was never appriciated by anyone besides the boomers. You never saw all day marathons of Cheers.
Then I realized Mash was huge with the Boomers, but also big with Gen X. Officially taking place in the Korean War, but really being just a vehicle to drive social commentary for The Vietnam War. But again, they never got all day marathons.
Then I thought Friends fit the bill. Boomers watch friends, Gen X watches Friends, Millenials watch Friends. Even Gen Z watches friends, and they weren’t even born when the show ended. But they still watch it, and love it. TBS still commonly has 8 hour blocks of Friends.
And I thought that was going to be my answer. Until I realized one thing.
The Flintstones has been going since the 1940s I think. In the 90s, Cartoon Network first started up, they used to show all the old 1940s-1960s cartoons. Adult Swim wasn’t a thing yet. The kids who would be asleep, so maybe show the cartoons the adults maybe might like. It didn’t catch on, because boomers would be the target audience, and they’ve never cared about nostolgia.
Then it hit me. Seaseme Street. Here’s a show that gets shown every weekday, several times a day, and has been since the 1960s. It has no target generation besides “kids aged 2-6”. So unlike the Flintstones, it never had periods of being off the air.
So I’d say either The Simpsons, or Seaseme Street. Both shows have massive backlogs of episodes. Both shows get marathon blocks on various channels. Both shows have no target generational audience.
So it’s gotta be one of those. Runner up might be “The Office”. If that show were older, and longer running, it might be in contention with how comedy central, tbs, tnt, and fx all host marathon blocks of it.