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Inspired by What is the longest aired episode of a TV series?, what is the TV series that has the longest total screentime (duration of all episodes of all seasons taken together)?

I mean series with a plot, no news, talks, sport, game shows and screentime shall exclude commercial breaks. The series must either have been aired somewhere or must have been otherwise buyable (on DVD, ...). Comic/animation or soap operas series are okay.

For example, Law & Order:Special Victims Unit has 20 seasons with 458 episodes and each episode about 40-44 minutes running time, making the total screentime about ~13.3 days, but I actually cannot find the exact total running time.

Doctor Who has 851 episodes but the run time per episode varied strongly and the total runtime of Dr. Who is about 17 days.

NoDataDumpNoContribution
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    Do soap operas count as a series? –  Aug 21 '19 at 15:21
  • For Doctor Who: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/215779/5833 – Anthony Grist Aug 21 '19 at 15:34
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    If, as Snow asked, soap operas do count, one of the UK soaps (probably Coronation Street, as that's been going the longest) is a likely candidate. Here's what a quick Google search regarding Coronation Street turns up (the result was from about a year ago, so it will have increased since): "It first aired way way back in 1960, and its racked up nearly 10,000 episodes in that time. That's more than 4,000 hours of Corrie, or 170+ straight days." – Anthony Grist Aug 21 '19 at 15:40
  • @Snow Yes, they count. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Aug 21 '19 at 15:48
  • Since you excluded sports, WWE's RAW was announced longest running show in the US I think, I'm not sure in whether it's true – Vishwa Aug 22 '19 at 05:25
  • @Vishwa It's unlikely to beat the existing answer, but I'm not sure WWE should be excluded by "no sports". It's not the same as something like an NFL broadcast; WWE has plot and involves ongoing storylines. – Anthony Grist Aug 22 '19 at 12:52
  • @AnthonyGrist If the story and plot of WWE is comparable to Coronation Street, I'm fine with adding it. I would like to know what the total run time of WWE was. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Aug 22 '19 at 13:12
  • @AnthonyGrist Thanks for linking to the Doctor Who runtime question. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Aug 22 '19 at 13:14
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    While the plot of WWE might sometimes be similar to Coronation Street, the actual screen time of 3107 hours falls short. That figure is the length of the program, so you'd have to remove the advertising time (which I guess is a lot in this kind of program). –  Aug 22 '19 at 13:29
  • @AnthonyGrist I agree. may be they are advertising on longest running sport/sport entertainment show or something. I'm not sure. just noted something I remembered. WWE's plots aren't nearly as good as your worst drama series, so I'd be considering it just as sport entertainment show. – Vishwa Aug 23 '19 at 04:13
  • @Snow yes, WWE's RAW only has little more than thousand episodes, but their episode has runtime of usually nearly two to three hours, main events have longer runtime. (without commercials) – Vishwa Aug 23 '19 at 04:16
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    @Vishwa Yes. The first 1,000 episodes were 2 hours long, the remaining are 3. I factored this into my broadcast length of just over 3,000 hours. –  Aug 23 '19 at 05:55

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Since soap operas are in scope for this question, the answer can only be

Coronation Street, which is in the Guinness Book of Records as being the longest-running TV series.

Currently, the show is outputting 6 shows a week, each with 23-25 minutes running time.

From Wikipedia, there are 9,842 episodes (figure might not be accurate, but it's in the order of). This amounts to 246,050 minutes (4,100 hours, or 170+ days).

Given the time that the series has been running (59 years) and the output per week, I can't see any other series beating this until Coronation Street is cancelled, and even then it'll be a significant amount of years until it's surpassed.