Escape and Suspense!

Last Week of Guiding Light

Guiding Light will end its seventy-two year run on September 18, 2009. Two years ago, for their seventieth anniversary, they did an interesting episode about series creator Irna Phillips and Guiding Light's early days on radio and television. Anyone interested in old time radio will enjoy watching their re-enactments.

This episode is posted in five parts on YouTube, but they are worth the time to watch.

Guiding Light Soon to be Snuffed

Procter & Gamble and CBS Television are taking Guiding Light off the air after seventy-two years. It now joins The Edge of Night, Search for Tomorrow, Another World, and other once-great Procter & Gamble soap operas...that are no more.

I've never watched a single episode of Guiding Light, but when the longest running soap opera in history goes down, we all have to stop what we are doing and pay attention. Times have changed and daytime dramas are struggling to keep their audiences.

Perhaps Guiding Light will now join the other fallen, broken-down Procter & Gamble soap operas that are being rerun on AOL Video, but.... wait, Proctor & Gamble abruptly yanked all of those without warning in 2009! It was bad enough when they ended The Edge of Night's television run in 1984, but to do the same cruel thing again in 2009 by abruptly taking them off the internet was very disappointing.

I hope that Guiding Light fans will get angry and not let their show go off the air without a fight.  I would like to see those fans running through the streets screaming and crying--as I wish I had for The Edge of Night, even though it was pretty bad in its last  years.

Once a soap opera ends, it is gone forever...and Procter & Gamble may or may not let you see it again. (Guiding Light and Another World are currently available on Hulu.com, but for how long?)

Guiding Light began as a fifteen minute radio drama on NBC in 1937. It moved to CBS Television in 1952, but the radio show continued to air until 1956. The television show went from black & white to color in 1967, was expanded to a half hour in 1968 and to a full hour in 1977. Guiding Light will air its last episode on Friday, September 18, 2009, after more than 15,700 episodes on radio and television combined! It is the longest-running daytime drama in the Guiness Book of World Records and has been awarded sixty-nine Daytime Emmies.

For more information:

Guiding Light: After 72 year run CBS pulls Guiding Light from TV

CBS Pulls Plug on Guiding Light

 The $25,000 Pyramid May Replace Guiding Light on CBS

Guiding Light Signing Off: Will You Miss It?

Procter & Gamble Classic Soaps Blog

Procter & Gamble Classic Soap Channel Ends in January 2009

Radio episodes from Guiding Light are available at the Internet Archive

Here is a clip of an episode of Guiding Light from April 9, 1953. You can watch this episode on full screen at the Internet Archive.

While we are on the subject, here is a short Youtube video comprised of promos for The Edge of Night. (The visual quality is not very good.) These promos are from the last four years of its run, and they convey the basic essence of the show. It was like Suspense but in a soap opera format.

When Radio Was

Here is a segment from a television program about the history of radio. Not sure of the name of the television program (perhaps it was  Remember When...?), but the episode appears to be titled "When Radio Was." Dick Cavett was the host. 

The segment included below covers radio entertainment at night, and Suspense is the first show mentioned. Unfortunately, they don't go into much detail about the show, but there is a little bit of film footage of Peter Lorre performing part of his monologue from "Nobody Loves Me." 

If you are interested in watching the whole documentary you can find it in segments on YouTube.