Cyndi Lauper guests on ATWT in happier times. / CBS

Grammy Award-winning artist Cyndi Lauper (left) will perform her new single Into the Nightlife, off the recently released album Bring Ya To The Brink, and her hit song True Colors on AS THE WORLD TURNS on Thursday, July 3 (check local listings) on the CBS Television Network. Lauper will play herself in scenes with Daytime Emmy nominee Van Hansis (ÒLuke SnyderÓ) (center) and Jake Silbermann (ÒNoah MayerÓ) (right) where she visits the fictional town of Oakdale to perform at a Gay Pride Benefit. ©2008 Jimmy Wood/JPI. All Rights Reserved.

The latest casualty of the Great Soap-Opera Die-Off was named yesterday: CBS’s As the World Turns. Along with the closings of newspapers and the killing of Gourmet magazine, this is one of those epochal-sounding media deaths that drives home the big changes going on. I mean, count the rings on this baby: ATWT will be 54 years old when it goes. A soap opera was supposed to be a habit you formed and could maintain your whole adult life. Why are they collapsing?

There is, as always, one basic reason: they now cost more than they’re worth. There are, as always, many specific factors. But here, there is one overarching cultural reason that ATWT bought it: The whole world is now a soap opera.