Serial (radio and television) usually ran from Monday through Friday at exactly the same time every day. A show called The Smith Family which ran only one night a week on WENR in Chicago during the early 1930s was credited as the "great-granddaddy of the soap operas" by radio historian Francis Chase, Jr. One of the other shows that helped pioneer the daytime soap opera/serial was "The Guiding Light", which debuted on NBC radio in 1937, and then switched to CBS Television in 1952. "The Guiding Light" final episode aired on September 18, 2009, having a total of 15,762 episodes air on CBS. Some
Soap opera primarily broadcast live, interspersed with short pre-recorded film clips and still photos to remind the audience of the previous week's episode. The first long-running prime time soap opera was "Peyton Place" (1964–1969) on ABC. It was based in part on the eponymous 1957 film (which, in turn, was based on the 1956 novel). The popularity of "Peyton Place" prompted the CBS network to spin-off popular "As the World Turns" character Lisa Miller into her own evening soap opera, "Our Private World" (originally titled "The Woman Lisa" in its planning stages). "Our Private World" was broadcast from May to September 1965.