Later this month, Brad Carlton, a onetime pool boy who married the boss's daughter to become chief executive of a major cosmetics company, will apparently take a bullet and die for a cause.

That cause will not be the woman of his dreams (his former sister-in-law and the estranged wife of his sworn enemy), but daytime soap operas.

For all but one of the last 24 years, Carlton—a onetime Navy Seal and a secret Nazi hunter—has been a character on The Young & The Restless, the daytime ratings champ for the last two decades.

But Carlton, played by Don Diamont, and three other prominent characters on the CBS show have been axed as part of the severe retrenchment seizing daytime soaps—one of TV's oldest formats, its quintessential advertising vehicle, and the birthplace of product placement.

The financial crisis is hurting daytime soaps more than other shows, and may well doom them. Not so long ago, there were 16 soaps. Today, there are eight—with more cancellations seemingly imminent in the face of TiVo, D.V.R.'s, decreased market share, declining ratings, and the loss of financially pressed auto dealers as local advertisers.

"I see this moment as the turning point for soaps," a top CBS executive told me. "No format has been hit harder than daytime serials."

The executive says that within the next two months the network plans to dramatically slash the licensing fees it pays to the independent production companies that make its soaps. NBC recently did the same to the fees paid for its lone entry, Days of Our Lives—which have recently run about $1.8 million a week.

Two longtime (and expensive) Days cast members (Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn) have been dumped in order to keep the show on NBC for another 18 months. To trim costs, NBC wants producers to reduce actor salaries by as much as 40 percent.

In September 2007, NBC moved another soap, Passions, to DirecTV before shutting down the program altogether. Insiders at Days, a daytime staple since 1965, say they won't be surprised if the sands in their show's hourglass run out too.

A similar fate awaits CBS' Guiding Light, which debuted on radio in 1937 before becoming the longest-running drama in TV history. "That show isn't even treading water," says a network exec. "It's sunk below the waves."

An even more ominous sign for the industry: For the first time, the Daytime Emmys—designed specifically to promote daytime soaps—won't even be broadcast. Major networks deemed the fees too excessive for a show that draws abysmal ratings. Even the cable channel Soapnet isn't airing it.