Guiding Light "Guiding Light" episodes on a two-disc DVD set. Also beginning in June 2012 the series was later released on DVD in Germany beginning with the 1979 episodes. 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 Digest had up to 1.4 million subscribers. In 1980, Network Publishing Corporation purchased the magazine from Shapiro, who went on to found "Soap Opera Update". Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought the magazine from Gerry M. Ritterman in 1989. Ritterman had owned "Soap Opera Digest" for three years before selling it to Murdoch Magazines; Ritterman earned more than $50 million from his share of the $70 million purchase price. According to Ritterman, he'd purchased the magazine at 750,000 subscribers and sold it at 1.3 million. Murdoch sold Soap Opera Digest to K-III Communications in 1991. K-III was renamed Primedia in 1997, and