Soap opera soap opera "Guiding Light" (originally titled "The Guiding Light" until 1975) started as a radio drama in January 1937 and subsequently transferred to television in June 1952. With the exception of several years in the late 1940s, during which creator Irna Phillips was involved in a dispute with Procter & Gamble, "Guiding Light" was heard or seen nearly every weekday from 1937 until 2009, making it the longest story ever told in a broadcast medium. Originally serials were broadcast as fifteen-minute installments each weekday in daytime slots. In 1956, "As the World Turns" and "The Edge of Night", both produced
Soap opera soap opera advertisers pay the most for. Those who might watch in workplace breakrooms are not counted, as Nielsen does not track television viewing outside the home. The rise of cable and the internet has also provided new sources of entertainment during the day. The genre's decline has additionally been attributed to reality television displacing soap operas as TV's dominant form of melodrama. An early term for the reality TV genre was "docu-soap". A precursor to reality TV, the televised 1994–95 O. J. Simpson murder case, both preempted and competed with an entire season of soaps, transforming viewing habits and