Soap Operas
Daytime serials, or soap operas as they are better known, have a form and structure that separates them from other television genres. Rather than beginning and ending within the space of thirty to sixty minutes, soap operas never really begin or end. The stories continually unfold year after year at a slower pace than other genres and without episodic resolution. Soap operas leave unanswered questions at commercial breaks, they include flashbacks and repetition as a device to clue viewers in on elements they may have missed and to prompt further contemplation, and there are no reruns. In other words, a soap opera is a never-ending story that does not abide by traditional television rules.
One of the biggest nighttime soap operas in the early 1980s was Dynasty, which dramatized events surrounding the wealthy Carrington family and featured the actors (left to right) Kathleen Beller, Pamela Sue Martin, Joan Collins, Linda Evans, and John Forsythe. (Bettmann/Corbis)
Soap operas began on the radio in the 1930s as a device to sell soap products to women. Sponsors created programming to air between their product commercials. In 1940, there were sixty-four soap operas on the radio that ran fifteen minutes each.
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