For 11 weeks this year, Americans did not see John McCain, the Arizona Republican senator, on any of five Sunday news shows.

The republic survived his absence, but it was highly irregular for the Sunday shows — NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” ABC’s “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” When it comes to appearing on these programs, Mr. McCain might as well have his own segment: Since the beginning of 2009, he has appeared 97 times, more often than any other current or former politician, according to The Upshot’s analysis of data collected on the shows by American University researchers.

In honor of Mr. McCain, The Upshot has created the McCain Count, a measure of how often figures from politics, journalism and other walks of life appear on the Sunday morning talk shows. Even with smaller audiences than they once had, these shows continue to play an outsize role in influencing the debate in Washington and among the roughly eight million viewers who tune in each week.