A Soap opera is different to other television programmes due to the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode"
Soap operas originated from the boom in radio sales during the 1920's. To aim for the market that would be at home during the day the radio producers targetted women with Dramas. Many of these were sponsored by cleaning items and household goods as the target audience was mainly female. The first radio soap opera based in Chicago was sponsored by margarine for example. By 1939 the press had started to call the drama's "soap operas." The term opera had changed sense of the word since in the 20's when western films were described as "horse opera" These films changed the meaning of operas from musical to a T.v drama. .
Soap operas have a greater impact on peoples lifes that they realise. For example the American television show, Friends. According to a study by a linguistics professor at the University of Toronto, found that the characters used the word "so" to heighten adjectives more often than other, such as "very" and "really". He discovered that the use of "so" to heighten the adjective had become widely used across America very quickly. This is showing how to use of certain language can affect the way that a wider range of people can speak.
A large amount of people tune into soap operas weekly, certain episodes can reach larger audiences if it is a end of a large storyline, had heavy advertising or if it is an anniversary episode. Eastenders and Coronation street have been in the top 10 most viewed Tv shows since 1993. This highlights the large amount of people that view largly publisiced episodes.
This is an example of a trailer for the anniversary episode in Coronation Street:
To show the amount of people that view soaps weekly i have researched using BARB to find figures showing how many people view them weekly:
Week ending 3rd of July:
- Eastenders (Mon)- 8.63 Million
- Coronation Street (Mon)- 8.86 Million
- Emmerdale (Thu)- 7 Million
Most soaps follow certain conventions, they usually have the same kind of characters, same storylines but all have a different way of telling them asnd many come from different angles. For example many soaps have these characters and places:
- Pub/ Pub landlord
- Local shop/ Shop owner
- Local business man
- Old married couple
- Newlyweds
- Toughman
- Villain
- Peace maker
- Homosexuals
- Teenager
- Troubled teenager
Soap Operas bring in a large audience weekly, with such a large audience the effect soaps have on the public can not be seen very easily, but the study on the effect of Friends on the American public gives an insight to how powerful soaps can be.
I found this information through many different means:
Will Howlett
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