The Virginian

Name: The Virginian
Genre: Drama

1962–1971NBCDrama

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The first ninety-minute western on American television, and the third longest-running of them all.

The Virginian opens with a main title sequence of 46 seconds.

It arrived on NBC in 1962, when Truth or Consequences, Search for Tomorrow and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were also on the network.

The opening titles

46s

The first season's opening theme alone, in place of the bundle.

1960–ITVDrama

The longest-running television soap in the world, opening on rooftops and a cornet ever since 1960.

1965–NBCDrama

"Like sands through the hourglass" — the same sentence, over the same hourglass, for sixty years.

1964–1968NBCDrama

Sixties spy graphics and a brass chart, in the register every subsequent spy show either copied or reacted against.

1965–1969CBSDrama

An animated frontier vignette that pauses on four panels of a comic strip — a western opening built like a title card for a serial.

1968–2012ABCDrama

Llanview, and the first American daytime serial written around class and ethnicity rather than around a hospital.

1964–1999NBCDrama

The first American serial to run an hour, and the first to spin off another serial from itself.