Serial (radio and television) usually ran from Monday through Friday at exactly the same time every day. A show called The Smith Family which ran only one night a week on WENR in Chicago during the early 1930s was credited as the "great-granddaddy of the soap operas" by radio historian Francis Chase, Jr. One of the other shows that helped pioneer the daytime soap opera/serial was "The Guiding Light", which debuted on NBC radio in 1937, and then switched to CBS Television in 1952. "The Guiding Light" final episode aired on September 18, 2009, having a total of 15,762 episodes air on CBS. Some
Soap opera the Beautiful" – continue to air on the three major networks, down from a total of 12 during the 1990–91 season and a high of 19 in the 1969–70 season. This marks the first time since 1953 that there have been only four soap operas airing on broadcast television. "The Young and the Restless", the highest-rated soap opera from 1988 to the present, had fewer than 5 million daily viewers as of February 2012, a number exceeded by several non-scripted programs such as "Judge Judy". Circulations of soap opera magazines have decreased and some have even ceased publication. SOAPnet, which