There is a really interesting soap opera history. Soap opera is associated with the radio in the states of America. It was started in between 1920 – 30. At that particular time, radio was in its initial stages and it was just beginning and there were so many regional stations spread up in the USA. All of these radio stations were having single source of income and they have to rely on advertising and sponsorships for their earnings and big companies who have sufficient advertisement expenses could either simply use adverts or sometimes sponsor a full program itself. The company includes some big names like Cadbury.

At that time, radio was highly popular among housewives and home based girls. During this time, the work culture was not so prevalent and women prefer to stay at home. It is very obvious that women were the attractive option as an audience for those companies who are in the business of supplying household products like soap, detergent and cleaning products.

Further, the interesting soap opera history reveals that the companies such as Cadbury and others who were involved in the household products were in constant need of the radio stations that could be able to produce the programmes to attract people like women and other house based women who would be interested in buying their products. The creativity got enhanced and stations introduced with the new ideas especially designed for women like drama serials whose basic themes were home based problems and other domestic issues. There was a general tendency that these types of programme are popular among housewives only and they are a great source of entertainment for them. These drama serials were from different categories like romantic, melodramatic and tragic and became very popular and immediately successful. Some great scholar had given the phrase ‘soap-opera’ to address them.  The name ‘Soap’ was given because the sponsorship was received from the ‘soap’ companies like Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble and the term ‘opera’ was given because of their dramatical approach and attitude of life.

The other competitors in soap as well as radio companies immediately realised that these types of programmes were very popular and very cheap as well. They were becoming the ideal serials for women. And then the competition grew up, new advertising strategies came into existence and they made strategies to broadcast these channels on a national level. This step created a revolution in America and their first national radio network was with them by that time. The famous daily soaps on radio were “Ma perkin and One man’s family”.

The interesting soap opera history took a turn with the passage of time. In United States of America, the interest of people in radio soaps started decreasing gradually after the period of war as there were new source of entertainment like television. It was a new invention at that time. The sponsors, who were in constant search of new market and want to retain their audience, realised that television could be more appropriate for sponsorships and the result was that, by the end of 1950, radio soaps were almost dead.

Soap serials were very popular first on the radio and then they got transmitted to television. This was a change in the interesting soap opera history. But, there was no change in the advertisers. All the previous soap companies continued to advertise and sponsor. Other companies who were only radio based such as NBC and CBS were having no idea about television. They also realised the importance and adopt themselves accordingly. The writers who used to write for radio only were hired again to write the contents for television soaps as well. There was no change in the timings as well. These soaps were shown 5 times a week as they were aired on radio.

Initially, the companies were worried regarding the cost. But gradually they realised that after one time establishment of television and other set up cost, it is actually cheap to run all the daily soaps. Because the target audience was still same and that is women, programmes continued to broadcast during the daytime. Thus, it has really been interesting history of soap opera.

Gradually, the popularity of soap opera increased and the companies started concentrating on other audience as well like male audience. They were coming out of the television set up at home and were searching new means of advertising. They found outside location and started putting large TV sets in the open areas to attract all the categories of audiences. This first soap opera on television was named as ‘Peyton Place’, which was on the television from 1964-69. All this is the interesting history of soap opera.

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