The Young and the Westless

The last few months have seen some monumental changes. On September 18, 2009 the CBS’s soap opera Guiding Light went off the air after a run of some 72 years. On December 8, 2009 CBS announced that the last episode of As the World Turns would air September 17, 2010. As of January 1, 2010 Jim West has ceased blogging.

The comparison is, of course, approximate. While Jim’s blogs have been prone to melodrama and intrigue (who deleted his first blog?), they can’t compare to the sheer schmaltz of your average soap. However, at the same time Jim West is as much of an institution to the biblioblogosphere as the Guiding Light or As the World Turns is to the soap opera.

It’s difficult not to look for correlations between their disappearances. I find it hard not to see in this the harbinger of change. Yet what this could signal, I haven’t a clue.