The television serial format as we know it today actually originated in radio, in the form of children's adventure shows and daily 15-minute programs known as soap operas (so-called because many of these shows were sponsored by soap companies, such as Colgate-Palmolive and Procter & Gamble). Soap operas were specifically engineered to appeal to women (clearly to entice them to buy more soap). They usually ran from Monday through Friday at exactly the same time every day. A show called The Smith Family which ran only one night a week on WENR in Chicago during the early 1930s was credited as the "great-granddaddy of the soap operas" by radio historian Francis Chase, Jr. One of the other shows that helped pioneer the daytime soap opera/serial was The Guiding Light, which debuted on NBC radio in 1937, and then switched to CBS Television in 1952. The Guiding Light's final episode aired on September 18, 2009, having a total of 15,762 episodes air on CBS. Some of the characters in soap operas have been portrayed as long-suffering (a common theme even in some of today's serials along with the social and economical issues of the day). Children's adventure serials were more like film serials, with continuing characters involved in exploits with episodes that often ended in a cliffhanger situation.
Guiding Light and such other daytime television program serials such as As the World Turns (premiered in 1956), General Hospital (premiered in 1963), Days of our Lives (premiered in 1965), One Life to Live (premiered in 1968), All My Children (premiered in 1970) and The Young and the Restless (premiered in 1973) were popular in the Golden and Silver Ages of television and still are today.
Aside from the social issues, the style and presentation of these shows have changed. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s the drama was underscored with traditional organ music, and in the 1970s and the 1980s a full orchestra provided the score, the daytime dramas of today use cutting-edged synth-driven music (in a way, music for soaps has come full-circle, from the keyboard to the keyboard).
The nighttime serials are a different story, though the concept is also nothing new. In the 1960s, ABC aired the first real breakthrough nighttime serial, Peyton Place, inspired by the novel and theatrical film of the same name. After its cancellation, the format went somewhat dormant until the mid-1970s when ABC themselves brought it back with, of all things, a comedy soap (aptly called Soap). Although the show was controversial for its time (with a homosexual character among its cast roster), it was (and still is today) a cult classic.
The era of "primetime soaps" (as they are often called) really began to reach its peak when CBS began to air Dallas (which re-propelled Larry Hagman to stardom) in 1978. It was with this show that defined the end-of-season cliffhanger (with its "Who shot J. R.?" and "Bobby in the Shower?" storylines) that is still utilized in many of today's series (whether serials or not).
In the 1980s, there were other nighttime soaps as Dynasty (ABC's answer to Dallas), Knots Landing, Falcon Crest, The Colbys, Flamingo Road, Hotel and The Yellow Rose. There were some serial shows such as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere that did not officially fit into this category, but were nonetheless ratings hits season after season.
While the last of the 1980s nighttime soaps ended during the first years of the following decade, then a second wave came with series like Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, Models, Inc., Savannah and Central Park West. But as the 1990s came to a close, the primetime soap as an official format slowly passed into the sunset, where it largely seems to remain as of the middle of the first decade of the 21st century in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Serialized Drama, History
Famous quotes related to soap operas:
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)