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Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light prior to 1975) is an American television program credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as being the longest-running soap opera in production and the longest running drama in television history. The 15,000th televised episode of Guiding Light aired on September 7 2006. Due to this series run, it is not only considered to be the longest soap opera, but the longest series of any show created. The program was created by soap writer Irna Phillips, and began as an NBC radio serial on January 25 1937 before moving to CBS on June 30 1952, as a televised serial.
Production and locales
The fictional action has also been set in three different locales - it was based in the fictional towns of Five Points and Selby Flats before "moving" to its current day locale of Springfield. History, plot development, and castDue to the 6-decade run of Guiding Light as well as the complexity of the storylines, the show's history has been split up into separate entries. Cast lists are under individual articles. 1930s and 1940sThe series was created by Irna Phillips, who based it on personal experiences. After giving birth to a still-born baby at age 19, she found spiritual comfort listening to the on-air sermons of Preston Bradley, a very famous Chicago preacher and founder of the Peoples Church, a church which promoted the brotherhood of man. It was these sermons that formed the nucleus of the creation of The Guiding Light, which began as a radio show. 1950s
After Irna Phillips moved to As The World Turns in 1958, her protege Agnes Nixon became Head Writer of The Guiding Light. With the transition to television the main characters became the Bauers, a lower-middle class German immigrant family. 1960sAgnes Nixon reliquished her role as head writer in 1966. In 1967, the show was first broadcast in color. A year later, the show expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. The 1960s saw the introduction of African-American characters, and the main focus of the show shifted to Bill and Bert's children, Mike and Ed. 1970sFeeling pressure from newer, more youth-oriented soap operas such as All My Children, Procter & Gamble hired headwriters Bridget Dobson and Jerome Dobson in 1975. The Dobsons introduced a more nuanced, psychologically layered writing style, and included timely storylines, including a complex love/hate relationship between estranged spouses/step-siblings Roger and Holly. They also created a number of well-remembered characters, including Rita Stapleton, whose complex relationships with Roger and Ed would propel much of the story for the remainder of the decade, and Alan Spaulding and Ross Marler, who would both remain central characters into the 2000s. In the fall of 1975, the name was changed in show's opening and closing visuals from The Guiding Light to Guiding Light. On November 7 1977, the show expanded to a full hour and aired from 2:30-3:30 p. m. daily. The show in the 1970s focused on the Bauers and the Spauldings. Several notable characters were introduced. 1980sThe expansion of Another World to a full hour caused all the soap operas (and California-based serials) to move ahead a half hour, with Guiding Light now airing from 3p. m.-4p. m. The decision was made to re-introduce the thought-dead character of Bill Bauer. Everyone had thought that he had died in an airplane crash in the early 1970s, but he was said to actually be alive. When he returned to Springfield, he bought his daughter Hillary with him. Shocking to most viewers, Jerome and Bridget Dobson killed its young heroine, Leslie Jackson Bauer Norris Bauer, R. N. She was killed by a drunken driver, and many viewers stopped watching the show due to this death. In 1980, the Dobsons began writing to As the World Turns, and replaced by former actor Douglas Marland. He created some new characters like vixen Nola Reardon. In May 1980, Guiding Light won its first Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Achievement in a Daytime Drama. An ever more complicated storyline focused on the Bauers, the Spauldings, the Reardons and the Raines. Pam Long became head writer in 1983, and refocused the show on Freddy Bauer (now called Dr. Rick Bauer), Phillip Spaulding, Mindy Lewis and Beth Raines. She also introduced characters Alexandra Spaulding and Reva Shayne. Long would return for a second stint from 1987 to 1990. 1990sWith the new decade, the show started to change from Long's homespun, earthy style to a more realistic style. The Bauers, Spauldings, Lewises, and the Coopers had been established as core families, and most major plot developments circled around them. The show suffered major cast losses mid-decade, including the loss of characters Maureen Bauer and Alexandra Spaulding. As the decade progressed, the show began a series of outlandish plot twists to compete with the serial Days of Our Lives, including a highly controversial story on cloning. 2000sThe 2000s began with the splitting of the show into two locales: Springfield and the island nation of San Cristobel. In Springfield, the Santos mob dynasty created much of the drama. Meanwhile, the royal Winslow family had their own series of intrigues to deal with. In 2002, however, San Cristobel was written off the show and the mob's influence in the story was subsequently diminished and, with the departure of character Danny Santos in 2005, eliminated althogether. In 2005, former director and actress Ellen Wheeler (Emmy Award Winner, All My Children and Another World) took over as Executive Producer of Guiding Light. She and writer David Kreizman made numerous changes to the sets, stories, and the cast. Several veteran actors were dropped, mainly due to budget cuts. Due to the lack of veteran influence, Wheeler has refocused the show on the youth of Springfield, centering on the controversial pairing of cousins Jonathan and Tammy. CBS now offers Guiding Light to affiliates from 10-11a.m. ET and 3-4p.m. ET. And on September 18 2006, CBS began to offer a 9am ET feed of the show to its East Coast affiliates. [2] Previously, affiliates airing the show in the mornings had to do it on a one day delay. The show is celebrating its seventieth broadcast anniversary in 2007. The show plans to mark the occasion with a number of events, including closing production for a week so that cast and crew can go to Biloxi, Mississippi and rebuild homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina.[3][4] There will also be on-screen celebrations, including an episode where current cast members portray former characters. CastPlease see the articles by decade for cast. The current cast is in the article Guiding Light (2000-2009) Ratings/Scheduling HistoryUnlike most attempts made by popular radio serials to convert to a television version, Guiding Light never had any difficulty holding onto its old listening audience and making new viewers simultaneously. This was made easy by the fact that neither ABC nor NBC broadcast programs on their respective networks at 2:30 p.m. Eastern/1:30 Central, where CBS first placed GL. Six months into the run, however, the network moved the serial to a timeslot that gave it great popularity with its housewife audience, 12:45 p.m./11:45 a.m., where it ran for the next 15 years and eight months, sharing the half hour with its sister Procter and Gamble-packaged soap, Search for Tomorrow. GL handled the competition breezily, even legendary shows such as Queen for a Day on ABC (briefly in 1960) and NBC's Truth or Consequences. Usually, GL ranked second in the Nielsen ratings behind another P&G serial, As the World Turns. By 1968, though, changing viewership trends prompted CBS to expand its last two 15-minute daytime dramas, disrupting long-standing viewing habits. Search took over the entire 12:30-1/11:30-Noon period, with GL returning to its first timeslot, 2:30/1:30, albeit in the now-standard half-hour format, on September 9. This also caused the dislocation of The Secret Storm and the beloved Art Linkletter's House Party, as well as the cancellation of the daytime To Tell the Truth. It would not be the last time, though, as the next 12 years would bring several shifts around CBS' lineup. The 1970s saw GL's popularity dip somewhat, largely from the competition posed by younger-leaning serials such as The Doctors on NBC, but it still garnered decent ratings. After four years, CBS bumped it up a half-hour to accommodate P&G's demand that Edge of Night move to 2:30/1:30, a move that led to the end of that show on CBS three years later. In the meantime, GL stayed steadily on course against NBC's Days of Our Lives, another soap favored by younger women, and ABC's Newlywed Game. In late 1974, ABC replaced Newlywed with The $10,000 Pyramid, which went on to garner strong ratings, but not greatly at GL's expense. Meanwhile, by fall 1975 (at this point, the show dropped the word "The" officially from its title), the impending departure of Edge and CBS' planned expansion of ATWT affected GL by pushing it back to 2:30/1:30 in December, where NBC still ran The Doctors and ABC had a short-lived hit the next year with an updated Break the Bank. To complicate the picture further, ABC opted to make its first expansions, that of One Life to Live and General Hospital, in July 1976, each occupying one-half of a 90-minute block. With this in mind, CBS acted to give its veteran serial a contending chance by expanding it to an hour in length on November 7, 1977, strategically keeping its start time put in order to dissuade viewers from turning to the other networks. This gained particular importance when ABC finally added 15 minutes to both OLTL and GH by January 1978, so that GL straddled those two programs, as well as the first half of sister P&G show Another World on NBC. Despite GH surprising all observers by skyrocketing from near-cancellation to the top place in the ratings with the "Luke and Laura" storyline, GL hit an upswing as the decade ended. On February 4, 1980, CBS bumped GL down again, to 4/3, in the midst of a major scheduling shuffle intended to give Young and the Restless a shot at beating ABC's All My Children. It has remained in this timeslot since, facing GH and NBC entries such as Texas, The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour and Santa Barbara. none of which made significant impacts upon GL. Further GH eventually petered out by the mid-1980s as well. Overall, the first half of the 1980s saw a revival in Guiding Light's popularity, with a top-five placing achieved in most years, and although it slipped as the decade progressed, it was still performing solidly. This remained the case until the mid-1990s, when the show's ratings sunk as low as eighth out of 11. However, during the controversial clone storyline in 1998, ratings experienced a brief resurgence. Still, as of 2006, the lack of significant improvement in the ratings (coupled with massive budget cuts) has intensified speculation about the show's long-term future. In fact, as of January 2007, stations in the following markets air GL earlier in the day: Miami, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Fort Wayne, Ind., South Bend, Ind., Portland, Me., Albany, N.Y., and Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pa. Surprisingly, the first eight of these fourteen stations tape-delaying GL are actually CBS-owned. This represents a radical departure from past practices, when network owned-and-operated stations were almost never allowed to postpone airing a program from the live feed. Only two CBS affiliates do not air GL at all. One is KOVR-TV in Sacramento, California, even though its now a network-owned-and-operated station. KOVR had been acquired by CBS in the early Summer of 2005 but was a CBS affiliate since 1995. It never aired Guiding Light as a CBS affilate on a regular basis. Before CBS affiliated with KOVR it had been affiliated with KXTV. Back in 1992, KXTV Channel 10 as a CBS affiliate dropped Guiding Light. When KOVR became the CBS affiliate, KXTV became the ABC affiliate. Guiding Light has not therefore aired in Sacramento since 1992. WNEM-TV in Flint/Saginaw/Bay City, Michigan also does not air Guiding Light. They had also become a CBS affiliate in the mid 1990's. Initially they ran the soap but dropped it in 1996 due to underperforming ratings. In the Fall of 2006 WNEM began running Guiding Light on its digital channel, "My 5", which is a My Network TV Affiliate. Daytime history: Highest rated week (November 16-November 20 1981) (Household Ratings- Nielsen Media Research)
December 26 - December 30 2005 (millions of viewers)
AwardsDaytime Emmy AwardsShow
Individuals
Other awards
Head writers and executive producersTrivia
See also
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