HAPPY MEDIUM

Although this article from MediaVillage.com is almost nine months old, the sentiment it expressed was so interesting, I wanted to share it with the readers of the PGP Classic Soaps Blog and see what you thought about the writer's proposal.

Is it possible that Guiding Light might one day disappear from CBS television, only to continue its historic run on CBS' broadband channel, innertube? That won't be such a bad fate if broadband eventually outpaces broadcast, as so many experts insist it will. Further, if such a transition were to take place, might the number of people who view the program -- especially those elusive youngsters -- actually increase? Surely, the number of people who followed GL on a daily basis increased in the early Fifties when it moved from the declining medium of radio to the burgeoning newcomer that was broadcast television. In other words, GL would have died fifty-five years ago if it had nowhere to go after radio. Is it possible that fifty-five years from now it will have endured in some form online (or in other media yet to come)? We can only hope so, if only because a successful transition from radio to television to broadband would be so damn cool.

This article was written prior to Passions transition to Direct TV, which makes it seem all the more prescient.