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 radio serial was the long-running soap opera "Blue Hills", which was created by Gwen Meredith and ran from 1949 to 1976. With the advent of Australian television in 1956, daytime television serials followed. The first Australian television soap opera was "Autumn Affair" (1958) featuring radio personality and "Blue Hills" star Queenie Ashton making the transition to television. Each episode of this serial ran for 15 minutes and aired each weekday on the Seven Network. "Autumn Affair" failed to secure a sponsor and ended in 1959 after 156 episodes. It was followed by "The Story of Peter Grey" (1961), another Seven