All My Children and One Life To Live Cancelled by ABC

An end of an era is upon us.

When I was growing up I would come home from school and “All My Children” would be on the television.

I was not into music yet, but I could recognize that theme song from anywhere in the house.

Today, ABC announced that two of its longest running soap operas, “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” are coming to an end after almost 43 years of production.

“One Life To Live” started in 1968 and addressed many of the country’s social and economic issues, and it quickly became a hit with the “house wives” of the time and gave ABC the incentive to try their hand at another serial.

“All My Children” first aired in 1970. Like “One Life To Live”, “All My Children” focused on many of the country’s current and controversial issues. But instead of focusing on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the show addressed social issues such as homosexuality, AIDS and abortion.

With almost 11,000 episodes each, the shows were famous for jump-starting the careers of many of Hollywood’s now famous people like;

Laurence Fishburne, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayden Panettiere, Ryan Phillippe, Brandon Routh, Blair Underwood, Tom Berenger, Mischa Barton, Kim Delaney, Josh Duhamel, Jesse McCartney, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Lauren Holly, Christian Slater, Michelle Trachtenberg and Amanda Seyfried.

The trend over the last few years has been to move away from scripted daytime drama to a more comfortable daytime talk show format – think “Ellen” and “Oprah”.

The passing of the torch is complete and the daytime industry is now in the hands of our children.

Kids, you better not screw this up.