The Guiding Light (known since 1975 as Guiding Light) was an American television soap opera. Show development On June 30, 1952, The Guiding Light began airing on CBS television. From June 30, 1952 to June 29, 1956, The Guiding Light ran on both CBS television and radio, with the actors performing, the same scenes but for different audiences, live twice each weekday. The live television performances were in the morning, and then in the afternoon the actors read for the live radio show. On July 2, 1956, The Guiding Light became a CBS television show, only, and the show no longer was heard on radio. Episodes continued at 15 minutes in length. In 1953, CBS strongly persuaded Irna Phillips to let The Guiding Light experiment with television's first color broadcast. Phillips was not thrilled with the concept of color television, and thwarted the effort by CBS by having that day's episode take place entirely in a hospital setting with gray walls and white uniforms. The Guiding Light was broadcast in black and white for the remainder of the decade. In 1956, Phillips created As the World Turns, which first started airing on April 2, 1956 on CBS. When the workload of writing both that show and The Guiding Light became too much for her, Phillips handed the reins at The Guiding Light to her protégé Agnes Nixon. There is some indication that Procter & Gamble and CBS may have forced Phillips out of writing for The Guiding Light when on the March 31, 1958 episode, popular heroine Katherine "Kathy" Roberts Lang Grant Holden (played by the equally popular Susan Douglas Rubeš) was killed off in a Phillips-created story. Kathy, confined to a wheelchair, was killed after being struck by a car. CBS was deluged with protest letters. Prior to the launches of the half-hour shows As the World Turns, and The Edge of Night (both launched the same day), CBS and Procter & Gamble tried to convince Phillips to combine The Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow into one single half-hour show. Phillips declined. Major characters Original television cast (starting June 30, 1952) Friedrich "Papa" Bauer (Theo Goetz to end of decade) Meta Bauer White Roberts Banning (Jone Allison to November 14, 1952) Bill Bauer (Lyle Sudrow to June 29, 1956) Bert Bauer (Charita Bauer to end of decade) Trudy Bauer Palmer (Helen Wagner to August 22, 1952) Reverend Dr.