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. Running for 54 years, As the World Turns holds the third-longest continuous run of any daytime network soap opera on American television, surpassed only by General Hospital and Guiding Light. As the World Turns was produced for the 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 premiere. 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 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 ten 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. Three of these actors – Wagner, Hastings, and Fulton – are also the three 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 & Gamble-produced soap opera for CBS after Guiding Light aired its final episode on the network.
On December 8, 2009, CBS announced that it was canceling As the World Turns after a run of almost 54 years due to low ratings. The show taped its final scenes on June 23, 2010, and with a dramatic storyline finale, its final episode on the network aired on September 17, 2010. On October 18, 2010, CBS replaced As the World Turns with new talk show 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."
And so it was with 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 soap-manufacturing giant typically balked at 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' 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 Daytime 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, a position she held until 2010. 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. The show's producers stated in interviews that they had to revise their plans for the final episode because of Wagner's death – they had hoped that Wagner would say the final lines of the last episode just as she had said the first words of the first episode.

Crossovers

Several crossovers have been made between As the World Turns and other serials:
Since 2005, a number of characters have crossed back and forth between As the World Turns and The Young and the Restless:
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.
On December 8, 2009, CBS canceled the series after almost 54 years, with the series finale airing on September 17, 2010, making it the last Procter & Gamble soap opera to end.

President Kennedy's assassination

On November 22, 1963, the live CBS broadcast of As the World Turns began as always at 1:30 EST. In this episode, the Hughes family was discussing plans for Thanksgiving. Ten minutes later, a "CBS News Bulletin" slide suddenly came up on the screen and Walter Cronkite gave the first report of the assassination.
At the end of this bulletin, CBS rejoined As the World Turns which was still in progress. The cast, performing the episode live, was not yet aware of the rapidly developing situation. However, just before Don Hastings and Henderson Forsythe began the third scene of the show, Hastings overheard cameraman Phil Polansky talking to the control room through a headset: "Don't tell the actors what? The president's been shot?" The actors received their cues and began the scene while Walter Cronkite was in the middle of reporting further information from Dallas. CBS then returned to the show in the middle of the third scene, which would be the last viewed by the television audience that day. During the commercial break that followed, the "CBS News Bulletin" slide came up again and Cronkite resumed with audio-only reports of the developments in Dallas until the top of the hour when CBS News was ready to go on the air. Once the episode wrapped up with Eileen Fulton in the last scene, the cast was finally informed of the tragic news.
As NBC and ABC, the other two major U.S. TV networks, were not programming at the time, As the World Turns has the distinction of being the last regular U.S. network program broadcast for the next four days as the assassination and funeral of JFK and the transition of power to President Lyndon B. Johnson took center stage.

Broadcast history

As the World Turns enjoyed a virtually uninterrupted reign as the highest-rated soap from 1958 to 1978, tying for first place with NBC Daytime's Another World and Days of Our Lives. By the mid-1960s, it was so firmly entrenched that its strongest competition, Let's Make a Deal, despite developing a devoted fan base in its own right and becoming one of daytime's most popular game shows, could not come close to matching it in the Nielsens.
Its strength was such that ABC ran hour-long drama reruns in the 1:00–2:00 pm. slot in the mid-1960s and NBC, after losing Deal to ABC in 1968, ran a total of eight shows, all short-lived, against As the World Turns and Let's Make a Deal from that point until 1975.
As that year began, Another World was expanded to 60 minutes, with their first hour-long episode airing on January 6, 1975. Although this did not directly affect As the World Turns, as the two shows were not in competition for anything other than the overall ratings win, CBS' afternoon lineup suffered some ratings damage as the popular soap put a dent in the ratings of both of CBS' popular afternoon game shows, The Price Is Right and Match Game. NBC, pleased by the success that the expansion of Another World had brought to the network, elected to do the same thing with Days of Our Lives beginning on April 21, 1975; this put Days of Our Lives and As the World Turns in direct competition for ratings. Incidentally, the expansions were occurring seven years after the last two 15-minute serials, Search for Tomorrow and The Guiding Light, expanded to 30 minutes.
CBS considered expanding As the World Turns and Search for Tomorrow to 45 minutes, but eventually decided to expand As the World Turns, its front-runner in the ratings battle, to a full hour length. Initially, in order to free up the necessary thirty minutes to do so, CBS moved The Price Is Right, which had been paired with Match Game for the previous several years as part of the network's successful 3 pm game show block, to the morning. However, CBS changed course and decided that it would also attempt an expansion of Price to sixty minutes; this meant that, if the plans to expand As the World Turns were to go as planned, CBS would need to cancel a program to get that thirty minutes of airtime they needed.
At the time CBS was having trouble with the ratings for The Edge of Night. Procter & Gamble had demanded that CBS give the serial the 2:30 pm slot following The Guiding Light in 1972, moving it from the 3:30 pm slot it previously held. This decision proved to be a grave mistake. The Edge of Night, which had a much younger and more male-centric than almost any other serial on television when the move was made, lost a large portion of its audience, especially when the move to expand Another World was made by NBC, because The Edge of Night was now directly competing with the first half of the hit serial. In addition, the rest of CBS's drama lineup was performing well in the ratings and the network could not move the long-running serial to another time slot without risking pre-emption from local affiliates, which would have driven ratings even lower.
At the same time, ABC expressed interest in picking up The Edge of Night for its own lineup as it had been interested in carrying a P&G produced serial for some time. An agreement was struck between CBS, Procter and Gamble, and ABC to get the necessary 30 minutes for the As the World Turns expansion. CBS would not renew The Edge of Night once its contract was up, Procter and Gamble would move the serial to ABC, and thus As the World Turns could go ahead with its expansion.
A major issue arose that halted the planned shuffle, however. CBS was contracted to air The Edge of Night until December 1975, and ABC had no place in its schedule to take it on at the time. This forced CBS to temporarily postpone expanding As the World Turns and keep The Edge of Night until ABC could find a timeslot for it. Finally, in November, ABC agreed that The Edge of Night would join its lineup on December 1, replacing the game show You Don't Say! at 4:00 pm and keeping the serial's continuity intact. And thus, As the World Turns became CBS' first sixty-minute daytime program.
The first half of the newly-expanded show continued to perform well against Let's Make a Deal on ABC, which the network moved to the noon timeslot within four weeks of the expansion. The second half put As the World Turns in competition with ABC's most popular game show, The $10,000 Pyramid, which had done well against Guiding Light since the network moved it to 2:00 pm at the end of 1974 and kept doing so against As the World Turns. Although the expansion was not a complete success, at the end of the season, the serial was again at the top of the daytime Nielsens despite a 1.4-point drop from the year before.
Although the eventual hit game show Family Feud ran against As The World Turns from July 12, 1976, until April 22, 1977, it did not become a hit for ABC until its move to the mornings. Only when ABC made its first move to a one-hour soap with All My Children did trouble really begin for As the World Turns, since ABC kept that serial's starting time at 1:00/noon, meaning that fans of that serial who tuned to NBC or CBS would miss the last half of that day's storyline. Further, All My Children's emphasis on youth-oriented, sexier story lines provided a sharp contrast to the domestic, almost quaint tone of As the World Turns. On January 16, 1978, ABC ballooned its decade-old One Life to Live to the 2:00 PM/1:00 PM starting time, compounding the other networks' headaches. These factors helped contribute to the fall of As the World Turns from the top spot in the ratings at the end of the 1978-79 season. After finishing the previous season tied with Another World for number one in the Nielsens, As the World Turns fell to fourth behind All My Children, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless.
On February 4, 1980, CBS moved and expanded The Young and the Restless to a full hour after the cancellation of the soap opera Love of Life. The Young and the Restless moved from noon/11:00 am to 1:00 pm/noon and As the World Turns was bumped up to 2:00 /1:00 pm and Guiding Light to 3:00/2:00 pm. On June 8, 1981, As the World Turns returned to its longtime 1:30/12:30 pm start time with Search for Tomorrow following at 2:30/1:30 pm and The Young and the Restless leading off the serial lineup at either noon/11:00 am or 12:30 pm/11:30 am.
As the World Turns remained at 1:30/12:30 pm until March 20, 1987, when CBS cancelled the five-year-old Capitol in favor of The Bold and the Beautiful. CBS scheduled it at 1:30/12:30 pm, and finally settled As the World Turns at 2:00/1:00 pm, where it remained until its final network episode in September 2010. Although facing the full length of Another World and One Life to Live once again, the Douglas Marland era of 1985 to 1993 had a resurgence in ratings, and by 1991, it was back in its once habitual top-four placing. As the World Turns survived NBC's cancellation of its sister Another World in 1999.

End

On December 8, 2009, CBS confirmed that it would not renew As the World Turns. The final CBS episode was taped on June 23, 2010, at JC Studios in Brooklyn; it aired on September 17, 2010. The final scene included Kim Hughes telling Bob Hughes to take as much time as he needed. After he put his nameplate in his briefcase, Bob said the final line "Good night" and left Oakdale Memorial Hospital for the last time, at which point the globe started spinning before the final fade-out.

Ratings

Series ratings
One example of the drastic change in daytime television can be found in the following:
Rank/SerialHousehold Rating Network
1. General Hospital16.0 ABC
2. All My Children10.2 ABC
3. One Life to Live10.2 ABC
4. Guiding Light7.5 CBS
5. The Young and the Restless7.0 CBS

1995 ratings
Rank/SerialMillions Of Viewers
1. The Young and the Restless7.2
2. All My Children5.891
3. General Hospital5.343
4. The Bold and the Beautiful5.247
5. One Life to Live5.152

As the World Turns spent a record-breaking 20 years on top of the Nielsen ratings for American daytime soap operas, from 1958 to 1978. It would retain this record until The Young and the Restless broke it in 2008 when it remained #1 for 21 years and counting.
;Years as #1 series
YearHousehold Rating
1958–19599.8
1959–19609.9
1960–196110.4
1961–196211.9
1962–196313.7
1963–196415.4
1964–196514.5
1965–196613.9
1966–196712.7
1967–196813.6
1968–196913.8
1969–197013.6
1970–197112.4
1971–197211.1
1972–197310.6
1973–19749.7
1974–197510.8
1975–19769.4
1976–19779.9
1977–19788.6

Record Low: 1,773,000 viewers on December 25, 2009.
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CBS:

Executive producers

Head writers

Crew at cancellation

In South Africa, As the World Turns aired on SABC2 from June 2010 to February 2012 from 14:10 to 15:00 each weekday. Episodes were 4 years behind the original US broadcast. In Canada As the World Turns aired on ONtv, and, later, Global Television Network, and on NTV in Newfoundland and Labrador. In Jamaica As The World Turns started airing on Television Jamaica Monday to Friday 1:00pm beginning in 2011. In Belize As the World Turns was seen on Great Belize Television at 2:00 pm Central Time, usually the same day as the U.S. telecasts. In New Zealand As The World Turns was aired on TVNZ 1 from 1962 to 1989. In Australia, As The World Turns was aired on Network Ten first at 1.30 pm, then moved to 5:00pm before ultimately being dropped entirely in 1987.
In the Netherlands, As The World Turns was very popular and aired for more than 20 years. From 1989 till its cancellation, it was the best watched Daytime Soap. In 2010 Terri Conn, Martha Byrne, Marnie Schulenburg, Trent Dawson, Grayson McCouch, Van Hansis visited The Netherlands and were special guests at the "Farewell ATWT" meeting. Elisabeth Hubbard even guest-starred in the Dutch soap "Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden" for a while, after the cancellation of ATWT.

''InTurn''

In 2006, CBS launched a reality show called InTurn on their broadband channel innertube, the winner of which would go on to receive a 13-week acting contract on As the World Turns. The eventual winner of InTurn was Alex Charak, an 18-year-old "Student/Pizza Transportation Artist" from New York. Charak made his debut as the character Elwood Hoffman on September 26, 2006. A one-hour "best-of" show aired on CBS on November 24, 2006.
CBS launched InTurn 2 in the summer of 2007. For the new season, the age restrictions expanded to allow for middle-aged viewers to participate, and there were nine competitors instead of eight. The winner of the second season was Ryan Serhant, a recent graduate of Hamilton College. Serhant made his debut in the contract role on November 7, 2007. He plays Evan Walsh IV, son of Evan Walsh III. He is a young hotshot biochemist prodigy who comes home to Oakdale to try to convince Craig Montgomery to invest in the cutting edge biomedical tech field. He began taping on September 24, 2007, two days after the close of his off-Broadway play, Purple Hearts.
Inturn 3 began airing in April 2008 and featured 17 episodes.

Awards

Writers Guild of America Awards

As the World Turns won 43 Daytime Emmys:

Show

In 2010, As the World Turns was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Outstanding Daily Drama" during the 21st GLAAD Media Awards.

American Daytime Television Firsts

On the TV series Tom & Jerry Kids, while Tom watches Nine Lives to Live, Jerry changes it to As the Cheese Turns.
In the 1960s - 70s The Carol Burnett Show featured a recurring sketch called "As the Stomach Turns", a parody of As the World Turns and soap operas in general.
On All in the Family, Edith Bunker would occasionally mention wanting to watch The Secret Storm, but after that soap opera was cancelled, she would later mention As the World Turns as a viewing preference.
In the pulp series The Destroyer #22 "Brain Drain" by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, it was revealed that Chiun is a big fan of the soap opera As the Planet Revolves and constantly sits glued in front of the television to catch the broadcast.
Children's television network Nickelodeon once featured a series of shorts entitled As Our School Bus Turns, with the episodes taking place aboard a school bus. Each episode would end with a stereotypical soap opera cliffhanger.
In 1993, the PBS children's show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood featured a parody soap opera in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe called "As The Museum Turns", starring Lady Elaine of the Museum Go Round.
In 1999, Eminem recorded the song "As the World Turns" as part of his album The Slim Shady LP.

DVD release

In October 2011, SoapClassics released a 4 DVD collection of 20 selected episodes, marking the first time that any As the World Turns episodes were available on any recorded medium. The oldest episode on the collection dates from September 29, 1979, while the latest episode was from April 10, 2010.
In November 2011, a Christmas in Oakdale DVD was released, celebrating five Christmas episodes from the show. The featured Christmases are 1985, 1992, 1995, 2000 and 2007.
A "CarJack" collection was also released, celebrating supercouple Carly and Jack in 10 of their most memorable episodes.
The Holden and Lily Story collection had 10 of their most memorable episodes.
Farewell to Oakdale had the final 10 episodes of the series.
The James Stenbeck Story collection had 10 of his most memorable episodes
The "As the World Turns - The Wedding of Bob and Kim" DVD collection contained 10 episodes which aired April 2–15, 1985 that featured the bachelor party, the wedding ceremony, and the reception of Bob Hughes and Kim Sullivan, as played by Don Hastings and Kathryn Hays. This collection was only available online.

Note