As the World Turns
television series
As the World Turns (often abbreviated as ATWT) is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS for 54 years from April 2, 1956, to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created As the World Turns as a sister show to her other soap opera Guiding Light. With 13,763 hours of cumulative narrative, As the World Turns has the longest total running time of any television show. In terms of continuous run of production, As the World Turns at 54 years holds the fourth-longest run of any daytime network soap opera on American television, surpassed only by General Hospital, Guiding Light, and Days of Our Lives. As the World Turns was produced for its first 43 years in Manhattan and in Brooklyn from 2000 until 2010.
Set in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois, the show debuted on April 2, 1956, at 1:30 pm EST, airing as a 30-minute serial. Prior to that date, all serials had been 15 minutes in length. As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, which premiered on the same day at 4:30 pm EST, were the first two to be 30 minutes in length from their premieres. At first, viewers were indifferent to the new half-hour serial, but ratings picked up in its second year, eventually reaching the top spot in the daytime Nielsen ratings by fall 1958. In 1959, the show started a streak of weekly ratings wins that was not interrupted for over 12 years.
“As the World Turns” enters the record as television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what World, Turns and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“As the World Turns” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, World, Turns and television provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1261578. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2010, 2000 and 1958.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “As the World Turns”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow As the World Turns primary sources, As the World Turns archive and World research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “As the World Turns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.