Today June 30, 2012 is the 60th anniversary of Guiding Light's premiere on television in 1952. Unlike most radio shows of that era, that were moved to television, GL's migration was successful and remained on the air for over 50 years.
In honor of the anniversary, I had some google fun. As discussed on twitter and message boards, Guiding Light is available in German with both English and German tracks. You can read and order it via amazon.de even if you aren't located in a Eurozone country. You need a non-region or region 2 dvd player to watch the episodes though. From what I could decipher and from reading comments from those who have it. The set has 21 episodes, but the liner notes book is obviously in German.
What I found amusing was I found a youtube video, posted by the German company (user name Fernsehjuwelen) who is releasing the GL DVD. To advertise the release, they include a sample of scenes with some of the actors in 1979 dubbed in German. It begins with a Hold On to Love opening credits, then shows clips more than a decade older. The last scene is a short one with Michael Zaslow (Roger) and Chris Bernau (Alan). Click here to watch it.
Hopefully the people overseas will gladly fill us in about the contents of the DVD. I'd like more information before I invest money in a DVD player just to watch these episodes.
I wish SoapClassics would consider creating such a release for those of us in North America. I'd love to see the oldest material possible, just because I never saw it. Yes I realize it may be a limited market, but I think some people myself included would be willing to pay more for material of this nature, since fan video recordings of this nature don't exist or are of poor quality from this time frame.
There are a lot of things on-line that people can watch if the "I miss GL" mood strikes them. Everything from the 1987 anniversary episodes, the 1992 primetime special (which aired 20 years ago to mixed reaction) is available and of course one could watch the DVDs they've made or purchased from Soapclassics.
Also if you get a chance, please join us on twitter using the hashtag #GLParty if you are interested. Just do a hashtag search, and you can find out what episode is going to be watched. A lot of times though while there is show discussion about a particular episode, there is a lot of reminiscing about varied GL related topics.
I wanted to end this post with an ironic note. This is my 60th posting that is labeled as Guiding Light on my blog, and it is about the 60th anniversary. I didn't plan this, though the coincidence is quite amusing.
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