Beginning with the 1949 broadcast of Fashions on Parade, Procter & Gamble emerged as one of the first national companies to adapt to the advertising opportunities offered by television. Convinced that Procter & Gamble should take the lead in the development of television programs, in that year Procter & Gamble also organized a subsidiary company, Procter & Gamble Productions, Inc., to produce and acquire radio, television, and film programs and entertainments. Shortly thereafter Fireside Theatre, its first nighttime dramatic program, went into production and within a few years Procter & Gamble was producing many programs--westerns, adventures, situation comedies, game shows, children's programs, and variety specials--and more footage of filmed entertainment than any major movie studio.
All of these were nighttime productions, but Procter & Gamble gradually turned to daytime television, eventually becoming primarily identified in the public mind with the daytime soap opera genre. Search For Tomorrow, which became the longest-running program on American network television, was its first success. This was followed by the adaption for television of radio's Guiding Light which also went on to set broadcast records. Introduction of As the World Turns and The Edge of Night marked the transition to a thirty-minute format.
