We recently got a suggestion in our mailbox to profile Irna Phillips, "The Queen of Soaps", and asked ourselves... Do they still make soap operas? Immediately after, we saw a television advertisement for a new daytime soap.

But there are soap operas and there are soap operas (and we really don't know much about soap operas): "Guiding Light", "As the World Turns", and "Another World". All created by that aforementioned Queen of Soaps, Irna Phillips.

Phillips' first creation was a radio program called "Painted Dreams", which is considered "the first daytime soap opera". Phillips based it on her own family (but made them Irish, not Jewish), creating stories that appealed specifically to women... Considering that this was 1930, we gotta applaud whoever greenlit it.

It wasn't smooth sailing from there, as Phillips had to fight advertisers and radio stations, but eventually talent won out. "Guiding Light" was created in 1937, first on radio before moving to TV. It ran, in various incarnations, for 72 years! ("As the World Turns": 54, "Another World": only 35...)

So, yeah, they still make soap operas, but not like they used to.