High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The American situation comedy television series Friends was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The series began with the pilot episode, which was broadcast on September 22, 1994; the series finished its ten-year run on May 6, 2004, with 236 episodes. Each episode excluding the series premiere and finale has a title which starts with "The One...". They are, on average 22 minutes long, for a 30-minute timeslot including commercial breaks. Several episodes in season seven were produced for a "super-size" 40-minute timeslot to compete with the CBS reality series Survivor.