<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> External links </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Website </Td> </Tr> <P> Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light before 1975) is an American television soap opera . It is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest - running drama in television in American history, broadcast on CBS for 57 years from June 30, 1952, until September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19 - year broadcast on radio from 1937 to 1956 . Its radio and television runs taken together, Guiding Light is the longest running soap opera and the fifth - longest running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program Grand Ole Opry (first broadcast in 1925), the BBC religious program The Daily Service (1928), the CBS religious program Music and the Spoken Word (1929), and the Norwegian children's radio program Lørdagsbarnetimen (first aired in 1924, cancelled in 2010) have been on the air longer . </P> <P> Guiding Light was created by Irna Phillips, and began as an NBC Radio serial on January 25, 1937 . On June 2, 1947, the series was transferred to CBS Radio, before starting on June 30, 1952, on CBS Television . It continued to be broadcast concomitantly on radio until June 29, 1956 . The series was expanded from 15 minutes to a half - hour during 1968 (and also switched from broadcasting live to pre-taping around this same time), and then to a full hour on November 7, 1977 . The series broadcast its 15,000 th CBS episode on September 6, 2006 . </P>

When did guiding light go off the air