Farewell, Guiding Light

Well, if you didn't see the news, it's official: CBS has cancelled Guiding Light. I wrote about my feelings on this the other night, before anything had been confirmed, but I wanted to say a bit more tonight.

I never really followed Guiding Light, though there were a couple of times in the past decade that I tuned in for awhile, usually for no more than a month or so at a time. Still, even though it wasn't my soap (I still consider my soap to be Days of Our Lives, which I barely watch at the moment, because it's the soap I grew up watching, the only one I know all the intricate plot histories and familial relations for without even having to stop and think about it) or even one of the soaps I've adopted in recent years (As the World Turns and One Life to Live, which I'll never know as well as I know Days, no matter how many years I watch or how much of the history I try and brush up on), I feel for the viewers who've loved it over the years.

I don't think people who've never watched can ever truly get what it's like for fans when soaps are cancelled. Non-soap people are used to all the shows they watch having an expiration date, but the very essence of a soap opera is that they're always there. Five days a week, twelve months a year, from the time you're in your cradle until you're watching in the nursing home common room.

That's how it used to work, anyway. It never occurred to me, growing up, that there would ever come a time when Days of Our Lives wasn't on the air and I'm sure it didn't for those fans who grew up with Guiding Light, either.

Another thing about soaps is that, more than with any other type of show, the quality fluctuates. In other genres, once something starts going bad you can pretty much depend on it being off the air before it ever has a chance to improve. Soaps, though, are different. Sometimes, they get so bad that you stop watching for long periods, and yet you never doubt that the pendulum will swing back, maybe with a new writing staff or a new Executive Producer at the helm, and you'll be hooked again and most of the old characters will still be there.

Times are changing, though. Many reasons are cited for why soap ratings have plummeted over the past fifteen years. I personally blame network interference, poor writing quality and awful casting decisions more than anything else, but there are probably countless factors at work.

Whatever the reason, Guiding Light is just the latest victim in a long line, following Generations, Santa Barbara, Loving, Another World, Sunset Beach, Port Charles, and Passions, just to name the shows that have folded since the early 90's.

There is talk from Proctor & Gamble, the company which produces both Guiding Light and As the World Turns, about finding a way for the show to continue elsewhere. It would be amazing if that could happen, though I've heard this said about most of the soaps I just mentioned above and it rarely happens. Passions was an exception, running for about a year on DirecTV after NBC pulled the plug on it.

Still, if any show could somehow make a jump to a new medium, like airing exclusively online, it would be rather poetic if it was the one show that had been around long enough to start on radio and later make the leap to television.

Whatever happens, this is a sad day for all soaps and soap fans. The show will run on CBS until September, which if nothing else will at least give the writers time to wrap up the current stories.