Valley PR Blog

After 72 years, the Light is finally going out

By Abbie Fink on September 14th, 2009 In Uncategorized

The longest running television show is airing its final episodes this week.  After a 72-year run, that began on the radio, Guiding Light is coming to an end.

By the time the show ends, the various characters will have made it through 15,762 television episodes.

When it debuted on the radio on Jan. 25, 1937, FDR’s second term was just five days old, and Time magazine had just described television as “science which shows no serious signs yet of becoming an industry.”

The viewing audience has changed over the years.  When the soap opera began, named so for its primary sponsor Proctor and Gamble, women stayed home to raise the kids and while they were cooking and cleaning, they listened and eventually tuned in to their favorite story.  There was very little else to watch during daytime, so these shows became very popular.

Soap operas, with their everyday occurrence, could dive into societal issues like no other drama could.  Over the years characters dealt with marriage, divorce, infidelity, homosexuality, illness, rape, drug abuse, career changes, etc.  At the time, this was seen as very risky.  These storylines are commonplace in today’s programming – whether that is your favorite weekly show, daytime talk or the still-popular reality shows.

And a variety of today’s actors made their television start on Guiding Light:  James Earl Jones and Billy Dee Williams, some of the first African Americans on network soaps, appeared as Dr. Jim Frazier, respectively, and Kevin Bacon played the troubled youth TJ Werner in the ’80s.  Others include Taye Diggs, Calista Flockhart, Allison Janey, Melina Kanakaredes, Nia Long, Hayden Panettiere, Brittany Snow, Sherry Stringfield, Cynthia Watros and Ian Ziering.

Guiding Light has been a part of my family for years. Both grandmas listened to it on the radio and my mom was a regular viewer while we were growing up.  My love of the show continues to this day – in fact, my master’s thesis was written about soap operas.

But as some of the network executives have been quoted as saying, the viewing audiences for soap operas are literally dying off.  And as a result, ratings are at an all-time low.  And no matter how loyal those of us who watch every day may be, the all-mighty advertising dollar still drives what we see on network television.

So I will watch the final episodes this week and say a tearful goodbye to the Spauldings, the Coopers, the Bauers, the Lewis’ and all the others who have passed through the town of Springfield.  It looks like a game show will replace Guiding Light.  I for one will not be tuning in.

And in the words of Rev. Dr. John Ruthledge, one of Guiding Light’s original characters:

There is a destiny that makes us brothers

None goes his way alone

All that we send into the lives of others

Comes back into our own.

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