Guiding Light (known as The Guiding Light before 1975) is an American daytime soap opera. It aired for 57 years on television between June 30, 1952 and September 18, 2009 but began even earlier as a radio serial on January 19, 1937. With 72 years of radio and television runs, it is the longest-running American soap opera, ahead of General Hospital.
When the show debuted on radio in 1937, it centered on Reverend John Ruthledge and people whose lives revolved around him. The "Guiding Light" in the show's title originally referred to the lamp in Ruthledge's study that people used as a sign for them to find his help when needed. When the show transitioned to television in the 1950s, the Bauers, a German immigrant family first introduced in 1948, became the focus of the program.