First it was Guiding Light, and now As The World Turns is going to the great soap opera heaven in the sky.

It was announced today that CBS would not be renewing As The World Turns for the 2010/2011 television season, meaning that the last air date for the show would be Sept. 17,2010.  This means that the show will end after a 54 year run on CBS where it started off as a 30-minute live broadcast in 1955.

The is the second soap opera cancellation by CBS this year, with the first having been the 72-year-old Guiding Light having left the airwaves this past September.

TeleNext Media, Inc., the company behind both of the canceled shows, is a division of Proctor & Gamble, the main sponsor of both series.  This leads one to believe that it was possible CBS was just looking to sever that tie, but that is pure speculation at this point.  The remaining two CBS soap opera, The Young and the Restless & The Bold and the Beautiful, are both productions of Sony, but that doesn’t mean that they are any safer at this moment if CBS is looking to dump all of its soap opera properties.

Revenues for soap operas have been suffering in the past few years as audiences have declined, and the current recession began to cut into advertising budgets of companies.  On a local level, one of the biggest styles of advertisers has been car dealerships, but with the jump in gas pries a few years ago leading to lower car sales, they cut back on their ads, beginning this snowball effect that has led to the current situation.

It is easy to write soap operas off as melodramas because, well, they are, but I don’t feel they get enough credit for the training they give actors and writers.  For instance, did you know As The World Turns was the launching ground for actors such as Dana Delaney, James Earl Jones, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Meg Ryan and Marisa Tomei? (yes, some of them only appeared in one episode, but they still count)

With two soaps down for the count (TeleNext said they will shop As The World Turns around to other venues, but they said the same about Guiding Light), the precedent has definitely been set that soaps can end at any time.  ABC seems pretty vested in its line-up of All My Children, One Life To Live and General Hospital, but what Days of our Lives as the lone soap on NBC?  Of any of them, I could see NBC dumping Days just to clear the slate, and as I said before, how safe are The Young and the Restless & The Bold and the Beautiful over at CBS?

I think the days of the daytime dramas are numbered, and what a sad time that will be when daytime television is filled with nothing but talk shows and court programs.