Soap Operas Are Dying

A soap opera or soaper is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction presented in serial format on television, radio and in novels, featuring the lives of many characters and focusing on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas being sponsored by soap manufacturers.

In the United Kingdom, BBC Radio started to broadcast The Archers in May 1950. It continues today and is the world’s longest-running radio soap opera. The world's longest-running television soap opera, first broadcast on ITV in the UK in December 1960, is Coronation Street.

Origin of the Genre

The first serial considered to be a "soap opera" was Painted Dreams, which debuted on October 20, 1930 on Chicago radio station WGN. Early radio series such as Painted Dreams were broadcast in weekday daytime slots, usually five days a week, when most of the listeners would be housewives; thus, the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience. The first nationally broadcast radio soap opera was Clara, Lu, and Em, which aired on the NBC Blue Network at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time on January 27, 1931.

Story and Episode Structure

One of the defining features that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. While Spanish language telenovelas are sometimes called "soap operas," telenovelas have conflicts that get resolved and a definite ending after (more or less) a year of daily weekday airing. But with soap operas each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". In 2012, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Lloyd wrote of daily dramas, "Although melodramatically eventful, soap operas such as this also have a luxury of space that makes them seem more naturalistic; indeed, the economics of the form demand long scenes, and conversations that a 22-episodes-per-season weekly series might dispense with in half a dozen lines of dialogue may be drawn out, as here, for pages. You spend more time even with the minor characters; the apparent villains grow less apparently villainous."

Soap opera storylines run concurrently, intersect and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent narrative threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another or may run entirely independent to each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines, but not always all of them. Especially in daytime serials and those that are broadcast each weekday, there is some rotation of both storyline and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely bring all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends, there are several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger, and the season finale (if a soap incorporates a break between seasons) ends in the same way, only to be resolved when the show returns for the start of a new yearly broadcast.

Evening soap operas and those that air at a rate of one episode per week are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Evening soap operas and serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end-of-season cliffhanger.

In 1976, Time magazine described American daytime television as "TV's richest market," noting the loyalty of the soap opera fan base and the expansion of several half-hour series into hour-long broadcasts in order to maximize ad revenues. The article explained that at that time, many prime time series lost money, while daytime serials earned profits several times more than their production costs. The issue's cover notably featured its first daytime soap stars, Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes of Days of Our Lives, a married couple whose onscreen and real-life romance was widely covered by both the soap opera magazines and the mainstream press at large.

Soap Operas Are in Decline

Soap opera ratings have significantly fallen in the U.S. since the 2000s. No new major daytime soap opera has been created since Passions in 1999, while many have been cancelled. Since January 2012, four daytime soap operas – General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful – continue to air on the three major networks, down from a total of 12 during the 1990–91 season and a high of 19 in the 1969–70 season. This marks the first time since 1953 that there have been only four soap operas airing on broadcast television. The Young and the Restless, the highest-rated soap opera from 1988 to the present, had fewer than 5 million daily viewers as of February 2012, a number exceeded by several non-scripted programs such as Judge Judy. Circulations of soap opera magazines have decreased and some have even ceased publication. SOAPnet, which largely aired soap opera reruns, began to be phased out in 2012 and fully ceased operations the following year. The Daytime Emmy Awards, which honor soap operas and other daytime shows, moved from primetime network television to smaller cable channels in 2012, then failed to get any TV broadcast at all in 2014, 2016, and 2017.

Several of the U.S.’s most established soaps ended between 2009 and 2012. The longest-running drama in television and radio history, Guiding Light, barely reached 2.1 million daily viewers in 2009 and ended on September 18 of that year, after a 72-year run. As the World Turns aired its final episode on September 17, 2010 after a 54-year run. As the World Turns was the last of 20 soap operas produced by Procter & Gamble, the soap and consumer goods company from which the genre got its name. As The World Turns and Guiding Light were also among the last of the soaps that originated from New York City. All My Children, another New York-based soap, moved its production out to Los Angeles in an effort to reduce costs and raise sagging ratings; however, both it and One Life to Live, each with a four-decade-plus run, were cancelled in 2011. All My Children aired its network finale in September 2011 with One Life to Live following suit in January 2012. Both All My Children and One Life to Live were briefly revived online in 2013, before being canceled again that same year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera