Guiding Light Guiding Light Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light before 1975) is an American television soap opera. It is listed in "Guinness World Records" as the longest-running drama in television in American history, broadcast on CBS for 57 years from June 30, 1952, until September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio from 1937 to 1956. With its run of 72 years of radio and television, "Guiding Light" is the longest running soap opera before "General Hospital" and the fifth-longest running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program "Grand Ole Opry" (first broadcast
Soap opera typical of American daytime soaps; all of the others ran half-hour episodes. Unlike American or British soap operas, the most influential of which have run for years or even decades, even daily Canadian soap operas have run for a few seasons at most. Short-run soaps, including "49th & Main" and "North/South", have also aired. Many of these were produced in an effort to comply with Canadian content regulations, which require a percentage of programming on Canadian television to originate from Canada. Notable prime time soap operas in Canada have included "Riverdale", "House of Pride", "Paradise Falls", "Lance et Compte" ("He