The Future of Soaps?

Last Friday marked the end of the longest running program on the air in the United States in any medium: the 72 year old daytime soap Guiding Light. The show aired on radio for its first nineteen years, from 1937 to 1956, before making its television debut on CBS and remaining on the air a further fifty three years.

Some thought that the show might live on in another form, perhaps being the first soap to transition to airing online only. Sadly, for the fans of the show, this didn't happen and the Light went out after over seven decades of drama.

Many are seeing the loss of this daytime legend as the final nail in the coffin for daytime soaps, and they could well be right. Ten years from now, there may not be a single soap airing on any of the networks. I'm hoping that won't be the case, but things do look pretty grim.

That doesn't mean, however, that the soap opera genre is dying out. Guiding Light star Crystal Chappell (who played the Olivia half of lesbian couple Otalia, and will soon be returning to the role of Carly Manning on Days of Our Lives) has announced a new online show she's producing and starring in, entitled Venice. It will star several of her former Guiding Light co-stars, as well as the fantastic Hillary B. Smith, who plays Nora on One Life to Live.

Not long after, former As the World Turns (and, more recently, General Hospital) star Martha Byrne announced her latest project: Gotham: The Series. In addition to Byrne, the new online show will star her old As The World Turns co-stars Michael Park and Anne Sayre, as well as several unknowns.

It's not original to note that online programming could be the future of entertainment, of course, but where soaps are concerned, it may truly end up being the primary place for the entire genre. As it is now, even many fans of current soaps follow them online in one form or another. The networks haven't added a new soap to their line ups since Passions debuted a full ten years ago, and there's no sign that they ever will again.

The medium of online programming is new and as uncertain, just as television was back when Guiding Light first made that transition from radio. Soaps were some of the first shows to truly make a mark in that new medium, and maybe they will be in this new one as well.