# Soap opera
A soap opera is a long-running, serialized radio or television drama that follows the personal relationships and emotional conflicts of a continuing cast of characters, with storylines that carry across episodes and no planned ending in its original form. The term was coined by the American press in the 1930s for serialized domestic radio dramas, which by 1940 represented some 90 percent of all commercially sponsored daytime broadcast hours; the "soap" alluded to sponsorship by manufacturers of household cleaning products, while "opera" was an ironic contrast between the domestic subject matter and the most elevated of dramatic forms.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Origin of the name | Coined by the American press in the 1930s; "soap" from sponsorship by cleaning-product makers, "opera" as ironic incongruity[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) |
| Radio peak | By 1940, serialized daytime dramas made up about 90 percent of commercially sponsored daytime broadcast hours; 64 daytime serials aired weekly on the eve of World War II[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) |
| Defining structure | Seriality: linked installments, unresolved endings, characters who age, change, and die across episodes; US daytime soaps are "open" forms with no planned endpoint[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) |
| First TV soap | Faraway Hill, broadcast on the DuMont network in 1946, was the first networked soap opera; the genre was established on daytime TV by CBS's *Search for Tomorrow*, *Love of Life*, and *The Guiding Light* in 1951–52[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) • [11](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-television-soap-opera) |
| Longest run | *The Guiding Light* ran 72 years across radio and television before its cancellation in 2009[2](https://time.com/5793568/irna-phillips-100-women-of-the-year/) |
| Audience | By the 1980s, some 50 million Americans followed one or more soaps, including two-thirds of all women living in homes with televisions[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) |
| Recent trend | US daytime soap opera has been in decline since the early 2000s[3](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jptv_00074_1) |
## Form and narrative structure
The defining quality of the soap opera is its seriality. A serial narrative is told through individually linked installments, so a viewer's understanding of any episode depends partly on knowledge of previous ones, and each episode leaves loose ends for the next to take up. Serial characters change across episodes: they age, marry, have children, and die, and they possess both histories and memories, unlike the largely static characters of episodic television.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
Soaps divide into two basic narrative types. Open soaps have no endpoint toward which the action moves; all US daytime serials, the 1980s prime-time US soaps such as *Dallas*, *Dynasty*, and *Falcon Crest*, British serials such as *Coronation Street* and *EastEnders*, and most Australian serials (*Neighbours*, *Home and Away*) belong to this type. Closed soaps, in which the narrative eventually concludes, are more common in Latin America, where telenovelas dominate prime-time programming from Mexico to Chile.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
The genre is a subgenre of melodrama, relying on emotional confrontation and dramatic plot twists, and it is produced quickly and cheaply, often in a multi-camera format recording each scene simultaneously to sustain daily episodes.[4](https://filmdaft.com/what-is-a-soap-opera-definition-traits-tv-origins/) Early television soaps kept radio conventions: live week-daily 15-minute episodes, an unseen announcer to introduce and close each episode, organ music to punctuate dramatic moments, and a Friday cliffhanger to draw the audience back on Monday.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
## Radio origins
Soap opera began as one of the new programming forms tried by commercial radio broadcasters in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as stations and the newly formed networks tried to match advertisers to listeners. Broadcasters aimed at manufacturers of household cleaners, food products, and toiletries, hoping to reach their prime consumer market, women between the ages of 18 and 49.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
**Irna Phillips and the first soaps.** In 1930 the manager of Chicago station WGN approached a detergent company and a margarine manufacturer with a proposal for a daily 15-minute serialized drama set in the home of an Irish-American widow. [Irna Phillips](https://www.edgepedia.org/irna-phillips), a former speech teacher, was assigned to write *Painted Dreams* and play two of its three regular parts; she went on to create and write some of the most successful radio soaps of the 1930s and 1940s, including *Today's Children* (1932), *The Guiding Light* (1937), and *Woman in White* (1938). Her chief competition came from the husband-and-wife team of Frank and Anne Hummert, responsible for nearly half the soap operas introduced between 1932 and 1937, including *Ma Perkins* and *The Romance of Helen Trent*.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) TIME credits Phillips with pioneering the genre and popularizing cliffhangers and swelling organ music.[2](https://time.com/5793568/irna-phillips-100-women-of-the-year/)
By 1937 the soap opera dominated the daytime commercial radio schedule and had become a crucial network strategy for attracting large corporate sponsors such as [Procter & Gamble](https://www.edgepedia.org/procter-and-gamble), Pillsbury, American Home Products, and [General Foods](https://www.edgepedia.org/general-foods). Most network soaps were produced by advertising agencies, and some were owned by the sponsoring client. By 1948, the ten highest-rated daytime programs were all soap operas.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) By the 1930s Procter & Gamble had become the biggest radio advertiser in the country by dint of its serial dramas.[5](https://time.com/3634466/serial-history/)
The origin of the word itself is debated. The dominant account ties it to soap sponsorship, but one line of scholarship holds that "soap opera" was borrowed from "horse opera," a disparaging term for the western film and radio form.[6](https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-soa2.html)
## Transition to television
As television supplanted radio as a national advertising medium in the late 1940s, the companies that owned or sponsored radio soaps moved to the new medium. Procter & Gamble, which had established its own radio soap production subsidiary in 1940, produced *The First Hundred Years* in 1950, an early network television soap opera (the first, *Faraway Hill*, had aired on DuMont in 1946) that lasted only two years; production costs ran two to three times those of a radio serial, and it was unclear whether women working at home could fit visual viewing into their routines.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) • [11](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-television-soap-opera)
CBS led the adaptation, introducing four daytime serials in the 1951–52 season. The success of *Search for Tomorrow*, *Love of Life*, and *The Guiding Light* established the soap opera as a regular part of network daytime programming and made CBS the early leader in the genre. *The Guiding Light* was the first radio soap to make the transition to television successfully, airing on both media between 1952 and 1956.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
The 30-minute soap was introduced in 1956 with Phillips's *As the World Turns* for Procter & Gamble and CBS. It expanded the community of characters, slowed the narrative pace, emphasized character exploration, and used multiple cameras to capture facial expressions. Its ratings success and the cost savings of one half-hour program instead of two 15-minute ones persuaded producers that 30 minutes was the format of the future, and all new soaps after 1956 were at least 30 minutes long. Within two years *As the World Turns* was America's top daytime show, eventually drawing 10 million viewers every afternoon, and it ran for 54 years, the third-longest TV run of any daytime soap.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) • [2](https://time.com/5793568/irna-phillips-100-women-of-the-year/)
## Expansion and experimentation
CBS's dominance was first challenged in April 1963, when NBC and ABC launched the medical soaps *[The Doctors](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-doctors-1963-tv-series)* and *General Hospital*. Their popularity spawned the medical soap subgenre, in which the hospital replaces the home as the locus of action and the professional family parallels the biological family; the setting also allowed a steady introduction of new characters and contemporary social issues. *Days of Our Lives*, co-created for NBC in 1965 by Phillips and Ted Corday, made medical and psychiatric problems a breakthrough hit formula.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
The late 1960s brought experimentation. ABC's prime-time *[Peyton Place](https://www.edgepedia.org/peyton-place-tv-series)* (1964) tested whether daytime audiences would watch soaps at night, and the gothic *Dark Shadows* (1966) attracted teenage and college viewers. Phillips's protégé [Agnes Nixon](https://www.edgepedia.org/agnes-nixon) foregrounded class and ethnic difference in *One Life to Live* (1968) and made *All My Children* (1970) the first soap to write the [Vietnam War](https://www.edgepedia.org/vietnam-war) into its stories. CBS answered with *The Young and the Restless* (1973), designed by William Bell as a "Hollywood" soap focused on attractive young characters, which became the stylistic progenitor of later "slick" soaps such as *Santa Barbara* and *The Bold and the Beautiful*.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
By the early 1970s the three networks aired up to ten hours of soaps every weekday, and the aggregate daily audience reached 20 million. Production power rested with the head writer, who charted the narrative over six-month periods and assigned daily scripts to a team of dialogue writers; head writers were among the highest-paid writers in broadcasting and, to a greater degree than in any other television form, were frequently women.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
## The telenovela comparison
The telenovela, a melodramatic serial produced in Latin America since the 1950s, shares the soap's reliance on the melodramatic mode but differs in structure and audience. Soap operas are open forms broadcast during the day for years or decades and watched primarily by women, while telenovelas are closed forms with a clear beginning and end, lasting roughly 180 to 200 episodes or six to eight months, programmed in prime time and attracting a broader audience across age and gender. Telenovelas have become one of the largest media exports of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and in several Latin American markets they have displaced US-style soaps.[7](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/soap-opera) • [8](https://academic.oup.com/reference/62379/reference-article-abstract/554989107)
## Cultural standing and decline
In the United States the term has never been value neutral: to call a film, novel, or play a "soap opera" has been to label it culturally inconsequential, a connotation bound to the genre's identity as a "woman's" genre and its stereotyped audience of working-class housewives. Scholars note that the soap is in fact one of the most narratively complex television genres, requiring considerable viewer knowledge, and that its appeal has cut across social and demographic categories.[1](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera) The genre was also a staple in the development of feminist media studies approaches, given its serial structure, international appeal, focus on female characters, and address to female viewers.[9](https://academic.oup.com/reference/62339/reference-article-abstract/554204366)
Even though soaps matter culturally, the genre has been fading on American television since the start of the 2000s, and recent academic work studies how it has shrunk even as it spreads across platforms, as fandom shifts to the internet and episodes can be downloaded.[3](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jptv_00074_1) • [10](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412994248.n489)
## References
1. [Soap Opera, Encyclopedia of TV & Radio, Museum of Broadcast Communications](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-15/soap-opera)
2. [1957: Irna Phillips, TIME 100 Women of the Year](https://time.com/5793568/irna-phillips-100-women-of-the-year/)
3. [Serial narratives in the new millennium: The decline and the future of daytime US soap operas, Intellect](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jptv_00074_1)
4. [What Is a Soap Opera? Definition, Traits & TV Origins, FilmDaft](https://filmdaft.com/what-is-a-soap-opera-definition-traits-tv-origins/)
5. [How Radio History Hinted at the Conclusion of Serial, TIME](https://time.com/3634466/serial-history/)
6. [Soap Opera: Origins of Radio's Most Popular Drama, World Wide Words](https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-soa2.html)
7. [Soap Opera/Telenovela, ScienceDirect Topics](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/soap-opera)
8. [Telenovelas and Melodrama in Latin America | Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies | Oxford Academic](https://academic.oup.com/reference/62379/reference-article-abstract/554989107)
9. [Soap Operas, Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies](https://academic.oup.com/reference/62339/reference-article-abstract/554204366)
10. [Soap Operas and Telenovelas, Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture, SAGE](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412994248.n489)
11. [First television soap opera](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-television-soap-opera)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Soap operas and continuing serials › Soap opera overview*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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