Guiding Light is an American television soap opera that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running television drama in history, broadcast from 1952 until 2009, preceded by a 15-year broadcast on radio. Guiding Light stands as the third longest-running program in all of broadcast history; only the Norwegian children's radio program Lørdagsbarnetimen and the American country music radio program Grand Ole Opry have been on the air longer.
On April 1, 2009, it was announced that CBS canceled Guiding Light after a 72-year run due to low ratings. The show taped its final scenes for CBS on August 11, 2009, and its final episode on the network aired on September 18, 2009.
Love of Life is an American soap opera which aired on CBS from September 24, 1951, to February 1, 1980. It was created by Roy Winsor, whose previous creation Search for Tomorrow had premiered three weeks before Love of Life, and who would go on to create The Secret Storm two and a half years later.
Search for Tomorrow is an American soap opera that premiered on September 3, 1951, on CBS. The show was moved from CBS to NBC on March 29, 1982. It continued on NBC until the final episode aired on December 26, 1986, a run of thirty-five years. At the time of its final broadcast, it was the longest-running non-news program on television. This record would later be broken by Hallmark Hall of Fame, which premiered on Christmas Eve 1951 and still airs occasionally.
The show was created by Roy Winsor and was first written by Agnes Nixon for thirteen weeks and, later, by Irving Vendig.
Miss Susan is a daytime drama which aired on NBC from March 12 to December 28, 1951. The show, originating from Philadelphia and later retitled Martinsville, U.S.A., aired for fifteen minutes at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays. The main writer was William Kendall Clarke.
Hawkins Falls, Population 6200 is the first successful American television soap opera. Sponsored by Unilever's blue detergent, Surf, the program began as a one hour comedy-drama on June 17, 1950, and ran in prime time on the NBC network until October 12, 1950.
On April 2, 1951, the series was moved to a fifteen-minute daytime slot, where it was retitled Hawkins Falls: A Television Novel, and developed into a soap opera format. Hawkins Falls ran until July 1, 1955, making it NBC's longest running soap opera until The Doctors exceeded it in 1967.
The town of Hawkins Falls was patterned after the real-life town of Woodstock, Illinois.