SOAP OPERAS FROM RADIO TO TELEVISION

The Rise of the Soap Opera

Gilbert Seldes writes that "the daytime serial was the great invention of radio." Three "women's serial dramas"—daily radio programs intended for an audience of women, featuring a stable cast and a melodramatic, domestic story which advanced slowly-—premiered in 1931. The three were "Clara, Lu and Em"; "The Goldbergs"; and "Myrt and Marge." The shows, in the beginning only fifteen minutes long, soon became a staple on radio. By 1939 the number of shows had grown to sixty-one. In 1950 the four television networks—NBC, CBS, ABC, and Du Mont—devoted seventy-five hours per week to daytime serials.

Importance of the Sponsor

From the early years of the serials, most were sponsored by soap manufacturers who were interested in advertising their products to women. The daytime serials became so associated with the sponsors that in 1939 some wag coined the term soap opera to describe them. Humorist James Thurber memorably described the fifteen-minute radio serial formula:

Between thick slices of advertising, spread twelve minutes of dialogue, add predicament, villainy, and female suffering in equal measure, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week.

Unsure of Success

With the advent of commercial television in the 1950s, network executives doubted the possibilities for the television success of soap operas. Many did not believe that women would sit and watch the same melodrama they previously listened to while performing housework. Once again had the networks had misgauged the response of the audience.

Soapmakers Bonanza

The sponsors, however, realized the potential of television. They knew that exclusive sponsorship of the daytime programs enhanced their ability to sell products. They thought that television would be a bonanza. Procter and Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive were the two most important sponsors of soap operas. Procter and Gamble quickly exploited what it saw as the great advertising potential of television. In 1951 the company formed its own television production company to produce soap operas. Procter and Gamble's large stake in soap-opera production contributed much to its rise by 1954 to be the largest television advertiser. From $7.2 million in 1951 Procter and Gamble's television advertising budget rose to $23.7 million in 1954.

On Television

The soap opera made the switch from radio to television in the 1950s with ease. In 1950, the year that CBS introduced the first television serial, "The First Hundred Years," there were twenty-seven such serials on the radio. In February 1954 there were seven soaps on television. The television soaps quickly matched and even exceeded the audience of their radio counterparts. The television version of "Guiding Light" was watched in 3.75 million homes in 1954 and ranked fourth among daytime programs. The radio version of the same soap was also ranked fourth among daytime radio programs, yet was listened to in only 2.7 million homes. The shows were televised live daily and were initially fifteen minutes long; late in the decade most soaps expanded to thirty minutes. The time slots for the shows were from 12 noon to 2 P.M. and from 4 P.M. to 5 P.M.

Stubborn Radio Success

Despite the increasing emphasis on television soap operas, radio serials continued to be popular through the middle of the decade. In 1952 the five toprated radio soap operas were on CBS. The list included "The Romance of Helen Trent," "Our Gal Sunday," "Ma Perkins," "The Guiding Light," and "Big Sister." The audience for the shows in 1952 reached as high as 4 million viewers. But both networks and advertisers quickly realized that the radio soaps were a dying breed. From a high of thirty-five programs on the air in 1952, the number fell to twenty-six in 1955. After 1955 the number of programs on radio dwindled, until by the 1959-1960 season there were only eight on the air: one on NBC and seven on CBS. At the end of that season NBC canceled its remaining soap, and CBS canceled one. CBS closed its radio soap shop in November 1960.

Enduring Soap Opera

Soap operas became the longest running shows on television and also the most profitable. "The Guiding Light" premiered on CBS in 1952 and remains on the air in 1993. "Search for Tomorrow," which premiered on CBS in 1951, continued on the network until 1982 and then on NBC until 1986. The relatively low costs of producing the shows and their high ratings ensured their popularity with the sponsors. The melodramatic stories of interpersonal relationships have led to an enduring popularity of the soap opera, regardless of the medium.

CORONATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
ON AMERICAN TELEVISION

The 2 June 1953 coronation of British queen Elizabeth II drove the already furious competition among the television networks to a new height. While all four networks—NBC, CBS, ABC, and Du Mont—planned coverage, NBC and CBS engaged in a frenzied race to provide the first taped coverage of the royal events. With combined costs running in excess of five hundred thousand dollars, the two largest networks spent months planning strategies to film independently the coronation and surrounding hoopla. The networks made elaborate, and some would say ridiculous, plans to speed the pictures back to the United States. NBC wanted to bounce a television signal off the moon; CBS wanted to use a guided missile. More-practical ideas triumphed, however, and both networks planned to use high-speed airplanes to fly the tape back to broadcast studios in the United States. The CBS plane arrived in Boston well ahead of NBC's. But the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), with the aid of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was the first broadcaster to receive film of the coronation and quickly began showing the event out of their Montreal studios. Much to the chagrin of CBS, both ABC and NBC cut into the CBC signal and beat CBS onto the air. As for the competition, the winner was ABC, who showed the coronation without spending an excessive amount of money.

Sources:

"Long Live the Queen," Time, 61 (25 May 1953): 67-68; "Who's on First?," Nevuweek, 41 (15 June 1953): 92.

Sources:

Murial G. Cantor and Suzanne Pingree, The Soap Opera (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1983);

J. Fred MacDonald, Radio Programming in American Life from 1920 to 1960 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1978);

Mary Mannes, "Channels: Soft Soap," Reporter (23 September 1954): 48-49;

Gilbert Seldes, "Darkness Before Noon," Saturday Review (5 December 1953): 53-54;

"Soap in Your Eyes," Newsweek (1 February 1954): 74-75;

Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kitross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 1978).

SOAP OPERAS

SOAP OPERAS are serialized dramas that were presented, usually daily, first on radio and then on television. The name was derived from the fact that manufacturers of soaps and other household products, most notably Procter and Gamble, were frequent sponsors of these programs. The soap opera is broadcasting's unique contribution to Western storytelling art. Although serialized stories had existed prior to the soap opera in printed fiction, comic strips, and movies, none of these forms exhibited the durability of the soap opera. The Guiding Light, for example, started on radio in 1937 and moved to television in 1952. Still airing original episodes in 2002 after nearly seventy years, The Guiding Light is the longest story ever told in human history.

Credit for the first soap opera usually goes to Irna Phillips, who created Painted Dreams for WGN radio in Chicago in 1930. The first national soap was Betty and Bob, created by Frank and Anne Hummert for NBC radio in 1932. Both Phillips and the Hummerts provided a wide variety of soaps for network radio over the next several years; only Phillips, however, would make the transition to television. After many decades, the Phillips-created serials As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, and Days of Our Lives were still on the air.

Although broadcasting was an industry dominated by men for most of its early history, the soap opera was designed for women and women were frequently employed to create, produce, and write them. Besides Irna Phillips and Anne Hummert, other prolific soap opera artists included Elaine Carrington (Pepper Young's Family, Red Adams); Agnes Nixon (All My Children, One Life to Live); and Lee Phillip Bell (with her husband, William Bell, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful). As gender roles changed significantly in the latter half of the twentieth century, the principal audience for soap operas—women who were at home during the day—began to diminish. In the 1970s, many soap operas were redesigned to attract younger viewers and college students. By the 1980s, soap operas like General Hospital were achieving high ratings among these younger viewers as well as among men. While early soap stories focused almost exclusively on romance and domestic home life, from the mid-1970s soaps often borrowed from other genres, integrating glamorous on-location settings and even elements of science fiction. The soap operas of Agnes Nixon became known in the 1970s and 1980s for their frank depiction of social issues in stories about rape, abortion, infertility, depression, child abuse, AIDS, and a variety of other controversial topics.

The problematic future of the genre became clear in the 1980s with the introduction of the daytime talk and audience participation shows. A soap opera is expensive and labor intensive to produce, requiring a very large cast and a production schedule that runs five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. The daytime talk show is, by contrast, simple, inexpensive, and amenable to reruns. While the daytime talk show virtually knocked the game show out of the morning and afternoon network schedules, about a dozen soap operas remained on the air. Several long-running soaps have ceased production since 1980, however, and competition from cable has brought overall ratings of the genre down considerably.

The first soap opera on network television, Faraway Hill, ran on the Dumont network in 1946 as an evening series. As had been the case in radio, however, the TV soap quickly settled into the daytime schedule. It was not until ABC introduced Peyton Place in 1964 that a serious attempt to return the soap to prime time was launched. Like a daytime soap, Peyton Place ran multiple episodes per week (up to three); had a huge cast of over one hundred; and did not broadcast reruns, even during the summer. Despite the commercial success of the series, however, the idea was not imitated again for years. In 1978, Dallas (CBS, 1978–1991) ushered in the era of the prime-time soap opera. Dallas employed multiple ongoing story lines and end-of-episode cliffhangers and, within a few years, became the most-watched series on TV. More prime-time soap operas were introduced over the next few years, including Knots Landing (CBS, 1979–1993), Dynasty (ABC, 1981–1989), and Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–1990). Although the prime-time soap had begun to wane by the 1990s, its influence was felt in nearly all genres of fictional television series. Before the advent of the prime-time soap, most series episodes were totally self-contained, with little or no reference to events that had happened in previous episodes. Since then, most series have employed some continuing elements from episode to episode.

The soap opera has also become a significant presence on cable. In 2000, Disney/ABC introduced SoapNet, a channel devoted to reruns of daytime and prime-time serials, and another soap channel was expected from Columbia TriStar Television. The Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo offer imported soap operas, telenovelas, which play to very large audiences. Even MTV, the youth-oriented cable channel, introduced its own soap opera, Undressed, in 1999.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.

Worlds without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. New York: Abrams, 1997.

RobertThompson

See alsoRadio ; Television: Programming and Influence .

soap opera. Nothing to do with opera. Term to describe long-running, often daily or several-times-weekly serial on TV and radio, e.g. (in Britain) Coronation Street, EastEnders, The Archers. Genre originated in USA on commercial radio and was sponsored by a firm—soap manufacturer, for instance—wishing to advertise its product. Irreverently, one could claim The Ring as the biggest soap opera in the world.

soap op·er·a • n. a television or radio drama series dealing typically with daily events in the lives of the same group of characters.