As the World Turns

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As the World Turns
Created byIrna Phillips
StarringHelen Wagner
Eileen Fulton
Don Hastings
Marie Masters
Kathryn Hays
Susan Brown
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons54
No. of episodes13,858
Production
Executive producerChristopher Goutman
Running time60 minutes
(30 minutes from 1956 to 1975)
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseApril 2, 1956 –
September 17, 2010

As the World Turns (ATWT) is an American television soap opera that airs each weekday on CBS.

Set in the made-up town of Oakdale, Illinois, the show first went on TV on Monday, April 2, 1956[1] at 1:30pm EST. Before this show, all soaps were fifteen minutes in length; ATWT was the first half-hour soap opera.[2]

At first, viewers were not excited about it, but ratings picked up in its second year, and reached the top spot in the daytime Nielsen Ratings by the fall of 1958.[3] As the World Turns was the most-watched daytime drama from 1958 until 1978, with ten million people watching each day. At its height, the main actors such as Helen Wagner, Don MacLaughlin, Don Hastings, and Eileen Fulton became very well known in the United States.

The show went from black-and-white to color in the mid-1960s, with the final black-and-white episode shown on February 10, 1967.[4] The show went from a half-hour in length to one hour starting on December 1, 1975. Also in 1975, they stopped doing the show live, and decided to tape it instead - that way, more than one episode could be taped in a day, and the actors would not have to work every day.

April 2, 2006 was the 50th anniversary of the soap opera on CBS. The show aired its 13,000th episode April 23, 2007; the 10,000th episode aired on May 12, 1995. As the World Turns is well known for having been taped in New York City[5] for all of its 52 years on television (43 years in Manhattan and nine years in Brooklyn). On December 8, 2009, CBS announced that As the World Turns would air its last episode in September 2010.[6] The series concluded on September 17, 2010.

References[change | change source]

  1. tv.com, As The World Turns, archived from the original on 2007-09-30, retrieved 2007-04-30
  2. Grant, Matthew, Daytime Soap Operas - Trivia, archived from the original on 2007-04-21, retrieved 2007-04-30
  3. soap-news.com, ATWT Ratings, archived from the original on 2009-02-10, retrieved 2007-04-30
  4. AS THE WORLD TURNS, archived from the original on 2007-05-04, retrieved 2007-04-30
  5. Krause, Lauren, New York on Film, archived from the original on 2007-04-04, retrieved 2007-04-30
  6. "CBS cancels another daytime drama". Retrieved 2009-12-08.[permanent dead link]

Other websites[change | change source]