As the World Turns


As the World Turns 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.

Premise

As the World Turns was the creation of Irna Phillips, who beginning in the 1930s, had been one of the foremost creators and writers of radio soap operas. As a writer, Phillips favored character development and psychological realism over melodrama, and her previous creations were especially notable for placing professionals – doctors, lawyers, and clergy – at the center of their storylines. Phillips wrote: "As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer, and the harvest of autumn—the cycle of life is complete."
This was therefore shown in As the World Turns, with its slow-moving psychological character studies of families headed by legal and medical professionals. The personal and professional lives of doctors and lawyers remained central to As the World Turns throughout its run, and eventually became standard fare on many soap operas. Whereas the 15-minute radio soaps often focused on one central, heroic character, the expanded 30-minute format of As the World Turns enabled Phillips to introduce a handful of professionals within the framework of a family saga.
Phillips' style favored gradual evolution over radical change. Slow, conversational, and emotionally intense, the show moved at the pace of life itself – and sometimes even more slowly than that. Each new addition to the cast was done in a gradual manner and was usually a key contact to one of the members of the Hughes family. As such, the show earned a reputation as being quite conservative, though the show did showcase a gay male character in 1988. During the show's early decades, the content-related policies of its sponsor Procter & Gamble Productions may have contributed to the perception of conservatism. The household products-manufacturing giant typically frowned on storylines in which adultery and other immoral behavior went unpunished, and as late as the 1980s, characters from the primary families were still generally not allowed to go through with abortions.

Notable history and accomplishments

As the World Turns premiered on April 2, 1956. It was the first television daytime drama with a 30-minute running time; all daytime dramas until then had 15-minute running times.
The series was also CBS's first to expand to a 60-minute running time in 1975. By 1958, the program was the number-one daytime drama in the United States, where it remained until 1978. As the World Turns won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series four times in 1987, 1991, 2001, and 2003.

Cast and characters

Helen Wagner

The first words spoken in As the World Turns in the first episode were "Good morning, dear", said by the character Nancy Hughes, played by actress Helen Wagner.
Wagner was acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest run in a single role on television. She did not play the role without interruption – she was temporarily dropped from the series after the first six months due to conflicts with creator Irna Phillips. Wagner also left the series in 1981, when she felt that writers were not interested in the veteran players and returned as a regular character in 1985.
On the episode broadcast on Monday, August 30, 2010, it was revealed that Nancy had died in her sleep; the next day's episode dealt with Nancy's memorial service. Nancy Hughes's memorial aired just two weeks before the series finale.

Crossovers

Several crossovers have been made between As the World Turns and other serials:
  • 1962
  • *The character Mitchell Dru was brought to Oakdale after the cancellation of the Procter and Gamble soap The Brighter Day. The same character was then transferred to a new P&G soap, Another World, shortly after its premiere in 1964. Another World was originally conceived by Irna Phillips to be a spin-off series of As the World Turns. Like several other characters from Another World, Mitchell Dru "crossed over" for one or more performances on the first Another World spin-off, Somerset, which premiered in March 1970.
  • 1965
  • *The character Lisa Miller Hughes was used as the basis to create a primetime spinoff soap Our Private World,, with Lisa leaving Oakdale and moving to Chicago, where she married wealthy John Eldridge, but had an affair with his brother Thomas. Though Our Private World only lasted a few months, and Fulton returned to As the World Turns in early 1966, after taking a few months off, remnants of Lisa's time on Our Private World were resurrected 26 years later, when it was revealed in 1992 that Lisa had had a son off-camera, hitherto unknown to viewers, before returning to As the World Turns in 1966. Her son Scott Eldridge tracked her down as an adult and remained on As the World Turns for several years.
  • 1999–2003
  • *Shortly after NBC canceled Another World on April 12, 1999, with the series finale that aired on June 25 of the same year, the characters of Cass and Lila Winthrop, and Jake and Victoria McKinnon crossed over to As the World Turns briefly. Jake and Vicky intended to move to Oakdale, but Vicky was soon killed off in September 1999, then appeared as a ghost to Jake and Molly from November 2000 to February 2001. Cass only appeared on a recurring basis through 2003, and Jake remained as a regular on the series until his character was killed off in 2002. Cindy Brooke Harrison also had minor appearances in 2000 and 2001. Vicky's mother and twin sister, Donna and Marley, made recurring appearances from 2000 to 2002, and left the show when they gained custody of Jake and Vicky's twin daughters after Jake's death. There were also plans to have a now-teenage Steven Frame come to Oakdale and live with Jake, but the character was reconceived as teenage Bryant Montgomery, the son of As the World Turns couple Craig and Sierra.
Since 2005, a number of characters have crossed back and forth between As the World Turns and The Young and the Restless:
  • 2005
  • *As the World Turns: At the request of Oakdale, Illinois, District Attorney Jessica Griffin, Michael Baldwin traveled there to serve as the attorney for Jack Snyder in a custody hearing involving his late wife Julia Larabee's son, JJ..
The irony in his appearance in the above-mentioned episodes is that 20 years before, LeBlanc left the role of Kirk McColl, the youngest son of Lisa's fifth husband, Whit McColl. So, to many long-time fans of both As the World Turns and The Young and the Restless, seeing LeBlanc as the character from the latter show was weird. History was also made during LeBlanc's appearance on As the World Turns, since both shows are made by different production companies, although they are on the same network.
  • 2007
  • *The Young and the Restless: Amber Moore called on her friend Alison Stewart to help trick Cane Ashby into marriage. After Amber drugged Cane, Alison dressed up as him for the wedding service.
  • *The Young and the Restless: Emily Stewart traveled from Oakdale, Illinois, to Genoa City, Wisconsin, in search of information on her sister, Alison Stewart. Emily met with Amber Moore at the Crimson Lights Coffeehouse, but Amber denied knowing Alison's whereabouts. After Emily was gone, Amber placed a call to Alison as a heads-up.
  • 2009–10
On December 8, 2009, CBS canceled As the World Turns after almost 54 years, with the series finale airing on September 17, 2010, making it the last Procter & Gamble soap opera to end until Beyond the Gates premiered on February 24, 2025.