‘Guiding Light’ says goodbye—will more soaps follow?

In five days, the light goes out.

After 72 years -- beginning on radio -- the soap opera that Guinness World Records christened the longest-running drama in TV/radio history will leave its melodramatic plot lines (Teen drinking! Cancer! AIDS! Cloning?) in the CBS vaults, another victim of the shrinking ratings that are decimating the soaps industry.

This year, "Guiding Light" averaged 2.1 million viewers, continuing its steady decline from even five years ago, when it attracted about 3 million.

Replacing the soap on Oct. 5 is a revamped "Let's Make a Deal," the game show popularized by Monty Hall in the 1960s and '70s, with Wayne Brady as the new host.

Whether or not "Deal" attracts "Guiding Light" mourners is irrelevant because games shows are infinitely cheaper to produce than daily dramas -- and that in itself is a victory for CBS and Procter & Gamble, which owns the show.

"Guiding Light," like its chest-clutching, mock-fainting peers, certainly has a devoted flock.

But soap operas are a fizzling concept in a world where viewers can catch the latest HBO series on demand, flip among 200 cable channels or go online to watch an episode of "30 Rock" on their laptops.

Even "As the World Turns," the second-oldest soap, is on shaky ground, according to CBS President Nina Tassler.

All of daytime is a challenged time segment in the broadcast day, she told critics at this summer's annual Television Critics Association gathering.

Given the range of competition, it isn't so surprising that interest in Josh and Reva, the Bauers, the Spauldings, the Lewises and the Coopers waned to the point where it was no longer financially sensible to maintain production of "Guiding Light."

"It's fractionalization, but by and large, it's a generational thing," said Peter Maroney, general manager of WTVR, the local CBS affiliate that airs "Guiding Light" weekdays at 3 p.m. "It's not your grandmother's TV anymore. A lot of soap-like serialization drama has shifted to prime time and other [parts of the broadcast day] as well, along with reality shows. I can see the appeal of soaps to a certain demographic, but there are so many places now to get that same sort of thing."

Years ago, before Twitter was a verb and the Internet existed primarily as a platform to shuttle e-mail, soap operas were appointment TV.

College students who now spend between-class time zipping off text messages and updating their Facebook pages had another goal: to sit on the couch and follow the daily stories of people they didn't know, but with whom they had formed an inexplicable bond.

But now, with so many distractions and options, younger generations have no desire to develop these ersatz relationships.

"If you think about people who started listening to soaps on the radio, that's all they had," said Dr. Thomas Donohue, a mass communications professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in TV studies.

"There wasn't any competition for character identification. There's so much competition on so many other media outlets now that people don't get hooked as easily."

. . .

But how about the ones who are still captivated?

Even though ratings for "Guiding Light" and its sudsy brethren have diminished, for a couple of million people a day, that hour of escapism isn't something that can be easily replaced by Brady offering a deal behind Door No. 1.

Nearly 150 people from Richmond to Florida to Canada responded to a Richmond Times-Dispatch query seeking fans of the show. And with the exception of a disgruntled viewer who no longer likes Reva's clothes and the more progressive plot lines (the lesbian single moms, Olivia and Natalia, made many traditional viewers uncomfortable), all expressed the kind of remorse usually reserved for family funerals.

"My love affair with 'Guiding Light' began at birth. You see, we were born in the same year, nine months apart and my mother would rock me to sleep as she tuned in her favorite 15-minute soap," said Sandra Cheatham Nelson of Richmond. "As the clock moved forward, I had come full circle, for I sat in the same rocker cradling my own daughter while glued to the love life of Reva and Josh. . . . I am saddened by the demise of my dear soap. It will be like a death in the family. I suppose I will just have to sit in the same rocker, close my eyes and let the imagination years of radio take over once more in memories of what was and is no more."

Rhonda Harper, a Fortune 500 executive in Atlanta, e-mailed to say, "The show has been my mind candy. I shift into low gear and lose myself in another world. But more than that, it's been a stabilizing force. My world changes, people and places come and go, but the show was always there."

. . .

Indeed, psychologists and sociologists opine that an attraction to soaps is twofold: The fictional settings allow viewers to live vicariously through the characters and sometimes identify with real-life issues, while the plotlines offer an unabashed diversion from everyday life.

"It's cathartic for a lot of women [the main demographic of soap watchers] to look at the characters and say, 'See, I'm not the only one. My life has some real bumps as well,'" Donohue said. "Then there is the idea that people having affairs with each other's in-laws certainly is escapism given the forbidden fruit of that kind of illicit relationship. I'd never sleep with my brother-in-law, the woman said, but I like watching somebody who will."

That feeling is confirmed by third-generation "Guiding Light" fan Christina Saba of Glen Allen, who stopped watching the show several years ago when plot lines were altered to appeal to younger generations, and contained some dashes of mundane realism.

"They cut back on any story lines involving anyone over 30, it seemed to me, and were focused on twentysomethings and teenagers," Saba said in an e-mail. "[Then] they started filming outside, changed the introduction to the show and started including interviews of the actors. Do soap watchers really want reality?"

. . .

Most soap fans, it seems, are not only attracted to the ongoing drama but also addicted to the daily cliffhanger, a compelling tease to ensure viewers will return to learn the resolution.

Dr. Carole Lieberman, a media psychiatrist and former Emmy-winning psychiatric script consultant for "The Young and The Restless" and "The Bold and The Beautiful," said it becomes routine to tune in to see "if the secret will be revealed, if the mistress is pregnant, if the son will sabotage the family business, if two star-crossed lovers will finally fall into each other's arms.

"Losing a soap opera, after being a faithful fan for years, is very traumatic because to viewers these are not just 'characters,' they are 'real people.' So it's like losing one's best friends and losing the 'drama' that's otherwise lacking in their own lives."

The crumbling of the once-dynamic soap industry has been gradual, and the large numbers of women who returned to the work force during the past couple of decades certainly instigated the erosion of the genre's core viewership.

But, more specifically, some experts pinpoint the O.J. Simpson trial in 1994-95 as the beginning of the end for the genre -- partially because of the real-life drama the trial generated, but also because of simple TV logistics.

Interest in the Simpson case was so overwhelming, most networks pre-empted the soaps in favor of nonstop trial coverage.

"Everyone tuned in daily to watch O.J., and when -- many months later -- his trial was over and the soaps returned, many viewers did not, because they realized they could live very well without them," said Deborah Wilker, a veteran entertainment journalist and contributing editor at Moving Pictures magazine. "Like FM radio and other moribund forms of media, traditional soaps have been dead for years."

. . .

That's the heartbreaking reality that faced the "Guiding Light" cast the second week of August, when the show's final scenes in the fictional town of Springfield were filmed in Peapack-Gladstone, N.J.

The early symbol of the show -- and the inspiration for its title -- the Friendship Lamp that sat in the church window of the Rev. Dr. John Rutledge, acting as a beacon for family and friends who needed to find him for help, will always epitomize fans' devotion to something that lasted seven decades.

Even nonsoap-opera fans must recognize the rarity of "Guiding Light," if only for its astounding longevity.

It may be premature to pull out the bugle to sound taps for all daytime dramas, but an evolving media landscape dictates that the status quo is rapidly changing.

"Remember the premise from which soaps came: in the middle of the last century, they evolved from radio to become a midday distraction for stay-at-home wives," Wilker said. "Now there are so many other ways that housewives and college students can fritter away their daytimes -- the least of which are 20 games shows like 'The Price is Right,' harmless talk shows like Ellen [DeGeneres] and Rachael Ray and the many courtroom/judge shows. All are worthy diversions. Soaps -- with their faux worlds and helmet-haired heroes, soaps are simply having a harder time than ever getting people to buy in."

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or .