The Virginian is an American Western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 television series starring James Drury

James Drury

James Child Drury, Jr. is an American actor probably best known for his success in playing the title role in the 90-minute weekly Western television series The Virginian, broadcast on NBC from 1962-1971...

 and Doug McClure

Doug McClure

Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s...

, which aired on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series (75 minutes excluding commercial breaks). Immensely successful, it ran for nine seasons—television's third longest running western, with nine seasons and 249 episodes.