Guiding is Going, Going, Almost Gone

By: Fred Cunningham | News Channel 7
Published: April 02, 2009 | 0 Comments | Post a Comment

CBS is going to dim the lights in Springfield this September. Guiding Light will be gone after more than 15,700 TV and radio episodes over 72 years.

I'm suddenly worried about an old friend of mine who I'll refer to as D.W. (no, it's not Darrell Waltrip) who used to rock away every weekday afternoon watching "the Guiding."

I hope he's doing all right.

So the Spaulding, Lewis and Cooper families are on notice: they have five months to tie up all those loose ends. The network announced Wednesday the final episode will be shown on Friday September 18.

I took a quick sample of reactions from the fan forum on Guiding Light's fan forum website at CBS.com:

"I was in shock then remembered the date and hoped it was a very bad April Fools joke. I rushed home to get on the web site . . . and it's true."

"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! This can't be happening!!!!!!"

"My son is named Josh most likely from this show!"

My wife used to watch the show, but has been a harsher critic of it lately. She doesn't find a storyline involving Kim Zimmer's Reva character being pregnant being very credible. Zimmer just turned 54 according to IMDB.com.

And yet, I heard an audible groan from her that CBS would pull the plug on a patient that's suffering through declining ratings.

Guiding Light does pretty well here in our area and drew more viewers than it's lead-in As The World Turns did in March.

But is this a start of things to come? Are soap operas (or "my stories" as so many viewers call them when they call the TV station) in danger of disappearing?

Some day I may have to add soaps to the list of things that I have seen in my lifetime, but are nearly impossible to find anymore:

- Milk delivery men
- Drive-in movies
- College football games that always started at 1:00 to 2:00 in the afternoon without being changed to "accommodate TV"
- Only having 4 or 5 TV stations to choose from on your dial
- Real NASCAR drivers, not the cookie-cutter assembly line types who sit behind the wheel these days
- Afternoon World Series games
- Reality TV-free network television