Soap opera largely aired soap opera reruns, began to be phased out in 2012 and fully ceased operations the following year. The Daytime Emmy Awards, which honor soap operas and other daytime shows, moved from primetime network television to smaller cable channels in 2012, then failed to get any TV broadcast at all in 2014, 2016, and 2017. Several of the U.S.’s most established soaps ended between 2009 and 2012. The longest-running drama in television and radio history, "Guiding Light", barely reached 2.1 million daily viewers in 2009 and ended on September 18 of that year, after a 72-year run. "As the
Soap opera but the experiment was largely a failure). Due to the masses of episodes produced for a series, release of soap operas to DVD (a popular venue for distribution of current and vintage television series) is considered impractical. With the exception of occasional specials, daytime soap operas are notable by their absence from DVD release schedules (an exception being the supernatural soap opera, "Dark Shadows", which did receive an essentially complete release on both VHS and DVD; the single lost episode #1219 is reconstructed by means of an off-the-air audio recording, still images, and recap material from adjacent episodes). Due to