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 (1980–89)
A replacement headwriter was found in Pam Long (who originally started writing in fall 1983 with Richard Culliton). Long was an actress who had appeared on the then-recently canceled Procter & Gamble soap opera "Texas" and, in an unusual move, was given the headwriter reins of that show during its last months. At "Guiding Light", she eventually clashed with CBS and Procter & Gamble executives who resisted her idea of introducing a Jewish family, the Weisses, to Springfield. With the rejection by Procter & Gamble and CBS of her idea for this new core family, Long left the show in early 1991. The only Weiss to ever be introduced to the canvas was Matt Weiss—and he only appeared for a couple of months in early 1991.