TVSquad

AOL TV has a list of the top ten longest running TV shows. It's a great trip down memory lane or if your a product of gen-Y like me, it's a good history lesson. I knew one (just one!) show on that list. I thought The Simpsons would be first for sure. Turns out that show is number ten. At least I got one.

The Simpsons has been on the air since 1989 and is still running. AOL TV summed up the animated show's success: "Spawning multiple catchphrases, iconic characters and a 2007 hit movie, FOX's pop-culture cornerstone satirizes overall society." And to think, Jennifer Tilly (once married to Simpsons producer Sam Simon) didn't predict that the show would do well. I remember watching a documentary on poker of all things (Tilly is an avid player as is Simon). She said that she didn't see the allure of people with yellow faces.

My other guesses were even more off-base. The Real World! Friends! Seinfeld! Check out the rest of the list and see how you do.

In July, I was at a sitcom writing seminar in which Sam Simon (who helped develop The Simpsons) declared: "the sitcom is dead." Veteran comedy writer Ken Levine (who hosted that sitcom seminar), however, disagrees. Ken believes the traditional multi-camera sitcom might be on a respirator, but still has a pulse. Levine said, "I would amend Sam's statement and say that yeah, the bad, stale, family sitcom with tired rhythms, forced laughs, and bogus characters is dead."

I guess if you're trying to revive the dying sitcom, a good way to start is by assembling a top-notch team. And Fox's new Wednesday night comedy, Back to You, does just that.

How many times have you watched a sitcom on TV and thought, "Hey, I could do that?" Last weekend, twenty aspiring writers came together at the LAX Hilton to test that theory.

The Sitcom Room, an exhausting, yet exhilarating two-day event, was the brainchild of veteran TV sitcom writer Ken Levine. To me, the event was the ultimate summer camp for aspiring writers and/or TV geeks.

Our corporate siblings at AOL have a fun interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus posted to their "TV Tattler" site. My colleague Geoff Bennett asks her some questions about her Emmy win for Old Christine -- she took the statuette to work the next day and placed it on the craft services table -- casting Blair Underwood as a love interest, and what it's like to play a working mother while being one herself.

But the question that got my attention was when Geoff asked Julia about her reaction to the Michael Richards incident. While she wouldn't condemn her friend and Seinfeld co-star, Julia was pretty truthful about how she felt at the time it happened: "At first I thought someone was kidding. I couldn't believe it. The whole thing was just so profoundly sad and heart-breaking. I was just really devastated by it."