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 opera met with negative reviews, but eventually proved critics wrong with nearly 13 million viewers tuning in each week. Even though the format proved successful, it was not until 1992 before "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten" became the first German daily soap opera. Early ratings were bad as were the reviews, but the RTL network was willing to give its first soap opera a chance; ratings would improve, climbing to 7 million viewers by 2002. Not long after "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten", Das Erste introduced "Marienhof", which aired twice a week. After successfully creating the first German daily soap, production company