The First Hundred Years and fewer still watched during the afternoon. The series was replaced with the television version of "Guiding Light", which would prove to be much more successful, airing for 57 years (72 years total when its 15-year run on radio is taken into account). The First Hundred Years The First Hundred Years is the first ongoing TV soap opera in the United States that began as a daytime serial, airing on CBS from December 4, 1950 until June 27, 1952. A previous daytime drama on NBC, "These Are My Children", aired in 1949 but only lasted one month, and NBC's "Hawkins
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