History of The Soap

Why are Soap Operas called soap operas?

Soap operas began in 1930s America and were extremely popular, the regional radio stations which appeared in this time all over the U.S.A relied on advertising for their revenue, and with a choice of either using adverts or sponsoring an entire programme, like Harvey's furniture store sponsor coronation street.

The main audience for these soap operas were housewives and obviously they were an ideal audience for companies supplying household goods such as soap, detergent and other cleaning products and these companies needed to utilise these radio stations in order to attract a large audience of this type who would buy their products. The stations came up with the domestic drama serials that focused on the home and family situations thought ideal for entertaining these women at home, these melodramatic and romantic stories were an immediate success and someone coined the phrase 'Soap-Opera' to describe such a serial.

'Soap' because of the type of companies they were sponsered by and 'Opera' as they were very dramatic much like an actual opera.

 The Archers

The Archers has been running nationally since 1951, it is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and is still going strong and attracting an audience of over 5,000,000 listeners making it the longest running soap opera.

Conventions

 Conventions are extremely important with the success and creation of soap operas, some conventions include:

• They are set in a particular place
• Focus on family life and personal relationships
• Based on a large group of characters living in a particular place who's storylines often overlap
• Romance, love and secret relationship are in most storylines.
• Most soaps focus on working-class communities.
• Everyday situations and relationships are shown in order to attract an audience through uses and gratifications 
• Each episode contains multi stranded narratives 
• Soap operas are usually sponsered by companies - For example Canons, Hollyoaks and Harvey's furniture store for Coronation Street
• not unlikely narratives ( but unlikely for them all to happen to the same people in the same village / street)
• Creates realism within the episodes which attracts audiences ( placement of clocks, diegetic sound, ect)

References:

• http://www.slideshare.net/bobusmaximus/3-history-of-soap-operas (Dawn Fletcher 2006) (last accessed by my on 11/09/2012)
• http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/media/s3/coronation-street/news/a63798/harveys-announced-as-new-corrie-sponsor.html (Kris Green 2007) (last accessed by my on 11/09/2012)
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/08/archrs_an_everyday_story_of_we.shtml