Talk:Gunsmoke

Cancellation threat

Gunsmoke didn't receive its cancellation threats in 1970, but rather 1967. It was then moved to Monday night in the early evening and ran for eight more years. Mike H 21:08, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Longevity

I just added in some information about Arness playing the same character in a Primetime scripted TV show for a long period of time. The Brits have two actors who have played the same characters for 27 years and 30 years....and the last one is till acting in the show. In terms of primetime scripted TV, there are also a number of TV shows that have eclipsed Gunsmoke's 20 year record now, including Dr who which has been running for 43 years and The Bill, Taggart and Casualty which have been running for more than 23 years.

Sign your posts, please. Just to be accurate, Doctor Who has not been running continuously for 43 years, or even for 43 years total. The sixteen year gap between the cancellation of the original series and the debut of the new one makes a huge difference. That said, I don't understand where someone got the idea that it has been running 36 years as stated in the article. 1963 to 1989 is 26 years (25 if you want to exclude the 1986-7 hiatus), plus three for the 2005-2007 series (as of this date). That makes 29 if you're being generous, not 36 or 43. The presence of DW on TV longevity lists is due to it being the longest-running sci-fi genre show, not the longest running show period, so let's not inflate the numbers please. If the only qualification is that it be a scripted drama (nowhere in the Longevity section does it say prime time scripted drama), where is the mention of the long-running daytime dramas, some of which have run continuously for over 30 years? 12.22.250.4 18:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

However, Doctor Who did has 23 continuous years (1962-1986) which puts it past Gunsmoke even if we disregard all incarnation of DW after 1986. Also, by number of seasons, Law & Order ties Gunsmoke, with 20. Gunsmoke is way ahead by number of episodes, but of we are counting episodes instead of seasons than Taggart is out of the running. JamesCurran (talk) 18:53, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I modified the longevity section slightly, as it previously stated that before the Simpsons surpassed it Gunsmoke was the longest live-action scripted television show. As the Simpsons is animated that seemed a confusing adjective to include in the sentence. NotStanley4330 (talk) 18:58, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Gunsmoke TV series

Shouldn't the TV series be split into its own article? --Blakebs (talk) 10:53, 10 February 2011 (CST)

Proposed article split

Like the proposal above, the televison and radio series should be split. There is enough info about both that allows it to be split. Me personally, I came here for the televison series. (i didn't even know there was a radio series) Robloxguest3 (talk) 02:12, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

And you just provided a good reason NOT to split the article. Plus there's a great deal of overlap and continuity between the two (not least in the main writer during the first few years). Intothatdarkness 12:48, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I think there's a bit of a "good faith" disconnect here. Re: the televison and radio series should be split. There is enough info about both that allows it to be split. - this article isn't about "both". This is a "parent" article (or, "overview" article) of an entertainment franchise that includes not just the radio and television series, but also the telefilms and other media. It needs to remain as such, since it introduces the entire franchise. Targeted redirects "with possibilities" for radio and television articles exist, meaning that there is the potential for a future article, but it hasn't expanded beyond that. Those would be "spin-offs". ButlerBlog (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Letters to the actor

An interesting historical sidelight is that some years ago it was revealed that James Arness would sometimes receive letters from people who claimed to be related to Marshal Matt Dillon, or even directly descended from him. The trouble with that was that Dillon was a fictional character! Perhaps some of those people were "cranks", but most likely many of them assumed that he had actually existed. It is possible that they had ancestors named Dillon, and so they believed that he had been related to that family. Tesseract12 (talk) 03:21, 14 May 2026 (UTC)