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
During January 1996, soap opera veteran Mary Stuart joined the cast as Meta Bauer (though referred to many times over the years, the long-running character originally played by Ellen Demming had not been seen onscreen since 1974); the character remained on the show until Stuart's death during 2002.