As the World Turns (1956)

Genre

soap opera, drama television series

Country

United States

Length

54 seasons, 40 episodes

Rating

5.6 of 10 from 14 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Set in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois, the show follows the lives, relationships, and struggles of its residents over decades. It is a long-running daytime soap opera that focuses on personal drama and family dynamics.

slow-paceddramaticemotionalserializedmelodramaticeverydaycharacter-drivenintimate

What happens

As the World Turns (often abbreviated as ATWT) is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS for 54 years from April 2, 1956, to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created As the World Turns as a sister show to her other soap opera Guiding Light. With 13,763 hours of cumulative narrative, As the World Turns has the longest total running time of any television show. In terms of continuous run of production, As the World Turns at 54 years holds the fourth-longest run of any daytime network soap opera on American television, surpassed only by General Hospital, Guiding Light, and Days of Our Lives. As the World Turns was produced for its first 43 years in Manhattan and in Brooklyn from 2000 until 2010. Set in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois, the show debuted on April 2, 1956, at 1:30 pm EST, airing as a 30-minute serial. Prior to that date, all serials had been 15 minutes in length. As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, which premiered on the same day at 4:30 pm EST, were the first two to be 30 minutes in length from their premieres. At first, viewers were indifferent to the new half-hour serial, but ratings picked up in its second year, eventually reaching the top spot in the daytime Nielsen ratings by fall 1958. In 1959, the show started a streak of weekly ratings wins that was not interrupted for over 12 years. The show switched to color on August 21, 1967, and expanded from a half hour in length to one hour daily starting on December 1, 1975, when The Edge of Night moved to ABC. In the year-to-date ratings, As the World Turns was the most-watched daytime drama from 1958 until 1978, with some 10 million viewers tuning in each day. At its height, core actors such as Helen Wagner, Don MacLaughlin, Don Hastings, and Eileen Fulton became nationally known. Wagner, Hastings, and Fulton are also three of longest-serving actors in the history of American soap operas. The show passed its 10,000th episode on May 12, 1995, and celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 2, 2006. On September 18, 2009, As the World Turns became the last remaining Procter and Gamble-produced soap opera on television after Guiding Light had aired its finale three days earlier; it would hold this distinction until Beyond the Gates premiered on CBS on February 24, 2025. On December 8, 2009, CBS announced it was canceling As the World Turns after five decades on the air. From 6.5 million viewers in 1993, the audience had dropped to 2.5 million by the time the show was canceled. After the series ended on September 17, 2010, reruns of The Price Is Right, Let's Make a Deal, and The Young and the Restless aired on the time slot for four weeks. On October 18, 2010, CBS replaced As the World Turns with The Talk. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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