This is an accepted version of this page 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.

In the year-to-date ratings, As the World Turns was the most-watched daytime drama from 1958 until 1978, with some ten million viewers tuning in each day.

On September 18, 2009, As the World Turns became the last remaining Procter & Gamble-produced soap opera for CBS after Guiding Light aired its final episode on the network.

Reruns of The Price Is Right, Let's Make a Deal, and The Young and the Restless took over the As the World Turns time slot between September 20 and October 15, 2010, for four weeks.

As the World Turns was the creation of Irna Phillips, who, beginning in the 1930s, had been one of the foremost creators and writers of radio soap operas.

As a writer, Phillips favored character development and psychological realism over melodrama,[7] and her previous creations (which included Guiding Light) were especially notable for placing professionals – doctors, lawyers, and clergy – at the center of their storylines.

Phillips wrote: "As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer, and the harvest of autumn—the cycle of life is complete.

"[8] This was therefore shown in As the World Turns, with its slow-moving psychological character studies of families headed by legal and medical professionals.

The personal and professional lives of doctors and lawyers remained central to As the World Turns throughout its run and eventually became standard fare on many soap operas.

The household products-manufacturing giant typically frowned on storylines in which adultery and other immoral behavior went unpunished and, as late as the 1980s, characters from the primary families were still generally not allowed to go through with abortions.

The first words spoken in As the World Turns in the first episode (aired on April 2, 1956) were "Good morning, dear", said by the character Nancy Hughes, played by actress Helen Wagner.

[citation needed] Several crossovers have been made between As the World Turns and other serials: Since 2005, a number of characters have crossed back and forth between As the World Turns and The Young and the Restless: The irony in his appearance in the above-mentioned episodes is that 20 years before, LeBlanc left the role of Kirk McColl, the youngest son of Lisa's fifth husband, Whit McColl (played by Wagon Train star Robert Horton, who was killed off shortly before Fulton's return to the show).

On December 8, 2009, CBS canceled As the World Turns after almost 54 years, with the series finale airing on September 17, 2010, making it the last Procter & Gamble soap opera to end.

Ten minutes later, a "CBS News Bulletin" slide suddenly appeared on the screen and Walter Cronkite gave the first report of shots being fired at the motorcade in which President Kennedy was travelling.

As NBC and ABC, the other two major U.S. TV networks, were not programming in that timeslot then (the 1:30–2:00 ET period belonging to their local affiliates), As the World Turns has the distinction of being the last regular U.S. network program broadcast for the next four days as the assassination and funeral of President Kennedy and the transition of power to President Lyndon B. Johnson took center stage.

By the mid-1960s, it was so firmly entrenched that its strongest competition, Let's Make a Deal, despite developing a devoted fan base in its own right and becoming one of daytime's most popular game shows, could not come close to matching it in the Nielsens.

Incidentally, the expansions were occurring six and a half years after the last two 15-minute serials, Search for Tomorrow and The Guiding Light, expanded to 30 minutes.

CBS would not renew The Edge of Night once its contract was up, Procter & Gamble would move the serial to ABC, and thus As the World Turns could go ahead with its expansion.

This forced CBS to temporarily postpone expanding As the World Turns and keep The Edge of Night until ABC could find a timeslot for it.

Finally, in November, ABC agreed that The Edge of Night would join its lineup on December 1, replacing the game show You Don't Say!

The first half of the newly-expanded show continued to perform well against Let's Make a Deal on ABC, which the network moved to the noon/11 a.m. timeslot within four weeks of the expansion.

Only when ABC made its first move to a one-hour soap with All My Children did trouble really begin for As the World Turns and NBC's ( Days of Our Lives), since ABC kept that serial's starting time at 1:00/noon, meaning that fans of that serial who tuned to NBC or CBS would miss the last half of that day's storyline (or, contrariwise, would not, if they watched until the mid-program commercial break and then changed channels, pick up the As the World Turns or Days of Our Lives activities from the episode's beginning, since ABC strategically placed its break several minutes after, rather than exactly at, the bottom of the hour).

Further, All My Children's emphasis on youth-oriented, sexier storylines provided a sharp contrast to the domestic, almost quaint tone of As the World Turns (and to a lesser degree, the melodramatic, somewhat topical Days).

On February 4, 1980, CBS moved and expanded The Young and the Restless to a full hour after the cancellation of the long-tenured Love of Life.

The Young and the Restless moved from noon/11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m./noon (the former affiliate break timeslot) and As the World Turns was bumped up to 2:00/1:00 p.m. and Guiding Light to 3:00/2:00 p.m. On June 8, 1981, As the World Turns returned to its traditional 1:30/12:30 p.m. start time with Search for Tomorrow following at 2:30/1:30 p.m. and The Young and the Restless leading off the serial lineup at either noon/11:00 a.m. or 12:30 p.m./11:30 a.m. (depending on affiliate preference).

Although facing the full length of Another World and One Life to Live once again, the Douglas Marland era of 1985 to 1993 had a resurgence in ratings, and by 1991, it was back in its once-habitual top-four placing.

In Australia, As The World Turns was aired on Network Ten first at 1.30 pm, then moved to 5:00pm before ultimately being dropped entirely in 1987[citation needed].

In 2010 Terri Conn, Martha Byrne, Marnie Schulenburg, Trent Dawson, Grayson McCouch and Van Hansis visited the Netherlands and were special guests at the "Farewell ATWT" meeting.

In 2006, CBS launched a reality show called InTurn on their broadband channel innertube, the winner of which would go on to receive a 13-week acting contract on As the World Turns.

He is a young hotshot biochemist prodigy who comes home to Oakdale to try to convince Craig Montgomery to invest in the cutting edge biomedical tech field.