Jonathan Taylor writes:

On Wednesday, CBS announced the cancellation of soap opera "Guiding Light," which began on radio in 1937, making it the "the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history," according to the Times (which also links to some original audio from the show's radio days).

For whatever reason, soap operas have been a source of continual fascination for The New Yorker. They've probably pushed a few buttons about "culture," and the "pop" variety thereof. I would give a lot to sit down on the sofa with Renata Adler and a box of wine on a 1972 afternoon for some proto-hatewatching. Maybe that's not quite the right word, but in her "Unhappiness Enough, and Time," Adler concluded: "There does not seem to be a single sense in which soap operas can be construed as an escapist form." Also: "One thing about a work of art is that it ends."

(The abstracter of this article didn't seem to get into it: "Overall look at television soap opera" is the entire thing.)

James Thurber's 1948 "Soapland" was a really overall (five-part!) look at the radio soaps. He investigated "the early pioneers in that field" and described their focus on "the plights and problems of small town characters stretched into endless sequences," isolated from broader "social consciousness"; he focused on the writers of the soap stories, and then on the "players"; and Thurber wrapped up with a consideration of the "listening women" (the audience) and the future of soaps on...television.

Among the truly numerous Talk stories about soap operas: The 1975 final taping of NBC's "How to Survive a Marriage" was covered. In 1978, Jamaica Kincaid attended the First International Soap Opera Exposition. Somewhat less sniffy is a 2001 piece (available online) about a real nurse who consulted for soaps, and had even appeared on "One Life to Live."

Soaps have provided also fodder for fiction by S.J. Perelman and Constance Schraft.

Cartoons are a whole other story, I imagine....