The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City. First broadcast on March 26, 1973, Y&R was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. It expanded to one hour episodes on February 4, 1980.

Since its debut, Y&R has won seven Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series. It is also currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television. As of 2008, it has appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen ratings in that category for more than 1,000 weeks since 1988