Soap Operas, Cross-Culturally Considered

Even though soap operas are typically considered a women's genre, soap operas are often watched and enjoyed by both men and women around the world. Soap opera as a genre was created for radio during the 1930s in the United States. Soap and detergent companies such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers sponsored these early radio programs. Since then, soap operas gradually became one of the most profitable, influential, and successful programming in U.S. broadcasting history and are also a popular genre around the world.

Most of these early shows were aired everyday for 15 minutes. These early soap operas mainly targeted housewives and focused on the issues of family, love, and relationships. Furthermore, they usually centered on a primary family and followed its everyday affairs and issues. Because of their continuous nature, these shows often ended with a climax to invite or encourage the audience to tune in and listen to the next episode.

In the United States in the 1950s, daily soap operas successfully transferred from radio to television. Guiding Light, which originated in radio, made its way to television in 1952. Most of the longest-running daytime soap operas, such as Guiding Light (CBS), As the World Turns (CBS), and Another World (NBC), were created by the legendary Irna Phillips in the 1950s and 1960s. Other widely popular shows (Search for Tomorrow, The Edge of Night, The Secret Story, and Love of Life) were created in the 1950s.

Due to the success of early soap operas, several other daytime series were created in the 1960s to attract audiences from different cultural and economic backgrounds. The Doctors and General Hospital (ABC), centered in fictional hospitals, were created, and Day of Our Lives (NBC), Another World (NBC), One Life to Live (ABC) and others made their first appearances. ABC's One Life to Live (OLTL), created by Agnes Nixon, one of Irna Philips's protégées, focused on the issues of class and introduced nontraditional (ethnically and racially diverse) characters. Prior to OLTL, soap operas mainly focused on upper-middle-class and upper-class families and their elegant and complicated lives.