Guiding Light
Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light before 1975) is an American television soap opera. It is listed in "Guinness World Records" as the longest-running drama in television in American history, broadcast on CBS for 57 years from June 30, 1952, until September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio from 1937 to 1956. With it 72 years of radio and television runs, "Guiding Light" is the longest running soap opera before "General Hospital" and the fifth-longest running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program "Grand Ole Opry" (first broadcast in 1925), the BBC religious program "The Daily Service" (1928), the CBS religious program "Music and the Spoken Word" (1929), and the Norwegian children's radio program "Lørdagsbarnetimen" (1924-2010) have been on the air longer.
Guiding Light (2000–09)
As a result of many missteps in the show's production and writing, Conboy and Weston were eventually fired after only a year. Ellen Wheeler of "Another World" and "All My Children" fame became executive producer in the spring of 2004. Her regime addressed unresolved plots. Wheeler and writer David Kreizman won praise from viewers and critics at first. The serial won the Writers Guild of America Award for best written daytime serial in 2005 and the show was the only one nominated. But the show still seemed unfocused at times, ratings continued to stagnate and in early 2005, it was revealed that "Procter & Gamble" had ordered "Guiding Light" to take a large budget cut. The actors themselves would also see a reduction in salary, and long-time stars Michael O'Leary, Jerry verDorn, and Marj Dusay were taken off contract. (verDorn would ultimately decide to leave the show, and Ross Marler was killed off; Dusay and O'Leary remained on a recurring basis.)