The Guiding Light Is Dimming

The unthinkable has happened. After 72 years, “Guiding Light” is going off the air.

When I was a little girl, 3 or 4 years old, I remember my mother working in the kitchen of our little apartment behind the neighborhood grocery that my dad managed. While she did her kitchen chores, she listened to her “stories” while I played at her feet. The radio sat on the icebox (icebox, not refrigerator), and every weekday morning Ma Perkins, Our Gal Sunday, and the Bauer family of the Guiding Light came to visit.

In 1952 the miracle of television came into our lives, and the Bauer family were there every weekday for 15 minutes after about a year or so when the broadcasting day began earlier than 5:00 pm as it had when we first got our TV. I have to admit that I became instantly addicted to the medium and would watch just about anything. I loved news anchor, John Cameron Swayze, but when “Guiding Light” came on, I made it my business to be some place other than the living room. I confess that I didn’t like GL. I watched the other “stories” that my mother watched, but for some reason I didn’t like the Bauers, especially Bert; I just didn’t like her face. I suppose Mother watched that show and the other CBS soaps until she died in 1978.

While I didn’t care for GL, I’m sorry to see it go. I haven’t watched any soaps for years, but it makes me a little nostalgic; a part of the entertainment world is coming to a close. (I hope that reality TV will soon follow.) NBC, I think, has only one soap airing presently, and I read that it probably wouldn’t continue after 2009. The ABC daytime dramas, as they are now called, seem to be faring a little better. I haven’t seen any reports of their demise.

I wonder why people stopped watching GL and other soaps. Is it because so many women are now employed, or is it because the story lines have become so silly and repetitive? I stopped watching NBC soaps when Marlena was possessed by the devil—the silliest story line of all time. I watched the ABC line-up for a couple of years, but I tired of the stale, silly plot lines. Now Mr. Fixit and I watch movies and I watch NCIS eleventy-six times a day.

But as I said, it makes me a little sad to see GL fade away. An era is ending. I know my mother would be sad, too.