#Longest running soap opera serial#
#Longest running soap opera tv#

This soap opera transitioned to television by 1952, but was taken off air in 2009 due to low ratings after broadcasting a total of 15,762 episodes. (The title of the show is very fitting for this, don’t you think?) It was initially started as a radio broadcast in 1937, and ran until 1956 on NBC Radio. The mother of all soap operas, “Guiding Light” set the stage for soap operas around the world. Here are some of America’s longest-running daytime soaps: 1. It’s hard to imagine how much creativity and dedication it needs to provide captivating storylines and incredible characters to keep the drama interesting for so long. But running for a couple of decades or more? It’s got to be legendary. But there are other great shows that lasted long, like The Simpsons, which has been on air for 29 years.įor any daytime soap opera, lasting for more than 10 years is impressive. There are some great shows that are remembered for being outstanding, most only lasted for a couple of years, like Breaking Bad (which lasted for 5 seasons) and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (which aired for 6 seasons).

#Longest running soap opera tv#

'No show in daytime or in primetime has touched so many millions of viewers across so many years as Guiding Light,' CBS Senior Vice President Barbara Bloom told the BBC.While some TV shows come to an end, others just seem to go on forever. Over the years, Guiding Light introduced viewers to a number of social issues like cancer, alcoholism and teen pregnancy, CBS said in a statement at the show's cancellation. “All the characters were gathered together in a park for a picnic before the show’s long-running on-off couple, Josh and Reva, finally declared their undying love and drove off in a pickup truck.” The final episode of the show ended on a high note, writes the BBC. Showrunners tried things: a money-saving switch to digital cameras and even, in 2006, a Marvel Comics crossover episode, but in the end CBS cancelled the show. Like all soaps, actors were regularly changed or replaced over time.īy the 2000s, like most soap operas, Guiding Light was struggling. Jim Frazier and nurse Martha Frazier, who was also his wife, were played by four actors over the years: first, Billy Dee Williams and Cicely Tyson and then James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee. In 1966, he wrote, the show also became the first network soap to introduce regular African-American characters. Here's a sample from the 1980s:Īt its start, it “focused on Reverend John Ruthledge and the community in a fictional suburb of Chicago called Five Points,” writes the BBC, “but the recent show revolved around the lives and loves of three families in the fictional mid-western town of Springfield.”Īnd over the years it hosted many actors who went on to become well-known outside soap circles, including Kevin Bacon, James Earl Jones and Calista Flockhart, Carter wrote. That exceptional run gave Guiding Light the Guinness World Record for longest-running soap opera. “The shows were.called soap operas because soap companies sponsored them.” To get people to keep tuning in, and hearing the soap ads that went with the show, each episode ended with a cliffhanger: more than 15,700 of them, according to the BBC.

#Longest running soap opera serial#

When it was finally cancelled after 72 years in 2009, Guiding Light was owned by Procter & Gamble, “a link to the earliest days of daytime serial dramas on radio,” wrote Bill Carter for The New York Times.

When it ended, the show was an hour-long CBS show. The show first premiered as a fifteen-minute radio spot, before becoming a half-hour television show in 1952. It was originally thought up by Irna Phillips, who was also behind As the World Turns and a whole lot of other popular soaps. The show lasted through two mediums and thousands of episodes. Today marks the eightieth anniversary of the birth of a cultural sensation that would outlast almost every other piece of broadcast media from its era: a soap opera called Guiding Light.