The First Hundred Years and fewer still watched during the afternoon. The series was replaced with the television version of "Guiding Light", which would prove to be much more successful, airing for 57 years (72 years total when its 15-year run on radio is taken into account). The First Hundred Years The First Hundred Years is the first ongoing TV soap opera in the United States that began as a daytime serial, airing on CBS from December 4, 1950 until June 27, 1952. A previous daytime drama on NBC, "These Are My Children", aired in 1949 but only lasted one month, and NBC's "Hawkins
Soap opera "The Young Doctors" (from 1982), "Sons and Daughters" (from 1983), "A Country Practice" (from 1982), "Richmond Hill" (from 1988 to 1989) and eventually, "Neighbours" was acquired by the BBC in 1986, and "Home and Away" aired on ITV beginning in 1989. These achieved significant levels of popularity; "Neighbours" and "Home and Away" were moved to early-evening slots, helping begin the UK soap opera boom in the late 1980s. The day Channel 4 began operations in 1982 it launched its own soap, the Liverpool-based "Brookside", which would redefine soaps over the next decade. The focus of "Brookside" was different from earlier