The soap opera genre originated in American radio serials of the 1930s, and owes the name to the sponsorship of some of these programmes by major soap powder companies. So, like many television genres (e.g. news and quiz shows), the soap opera is a genre originally drawn from radio rather than film.
Television soap operas are long-running serials concerned with everyday life. The serial is not to be confused with the series, in which the main characters and format remain the same from programme to programme but each episode is a self-contained plot. In a serial at least one storyline is carried over from one episode to the next. A series is advertised as having a specific number of episodes, but serials are potentially endless.
Successful soaps may continue for many years: so new viewers have to be able to join in at any stage in the serial. In serials, the passage of time also appears to reflect 'real time' for the viewers: in long-running soaps the characters age as the viewers do. Christine Geraghty notes that 'the longer they run the more impossible it seems to imagine them ending.' There are sometimes allusions to major topical events in the world outside the programmes.
Soaps in the U.K
Soap operas in the U.K. began on radio and consequently were associated with the BBC. The BBC continues to broadcast the world's longest-running radio soap, The Archers, which has been running nationally since 1951. It is currently broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and continues to attract over five million listeners, or roughly 25% of the radio listening population of the UK at that time of the evening.
An early television serial was The Grove Family on the BBC. 148 episodes were produced from 1954 to 1957. The series was broadcast live and only a handful of recordings were retained in the archives.
In the 1960s Coronation Street revolutionized UK television and quickly became a British institution. Another of the 1960s was Emergency Ward 10, on ITV. The BBC also produced several serials. Compact was about the staff of a women's magazine. The Newcomers was about the upheaval caused by a large firm setting up a plant in a small town. United! ran for 147 episodes and focused on a football team. 199 Park Lane was an upper class serial that ran for just 18 episodes in 1965. None of these serials came close to making the same impact as Coronation Street. Indeed most of the 1960s BBC serials were largely wiped.
Television soap operas are long-running serials concerned with everyday life. The serial is not to be confused with the series, in which the main characters and format remain the same from programme to programme but each episode is a self-contained plot. In a serial at least one storyline is carried over from one episode to the next. A series is advertised as having a specific number of episodes, but serials are potentially endless.
Successful soaps may continue for many years: so new viewers have to be able to join in at any stage in the serial. In serials, the passage of time also appears to reflect 'real time' for the viewers: in long-running soaps the characters age as the viewers do. Christine Geraghty notes that 'the longer they run the more impossible it seems to imagine them ending.' There are sometimes allusions to major topical events in the world outside the programmes.
Soaps in the U.K
Soap operas in the U.K. began on radio and consequently were associated with the BBC. The BBC continues to broadcast the world's longest-running radio soap, The Archers, which has been running nationally since 1951. It is currently broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and continues to attract over five million listeners, or roughly 25% of the radio listening population of the UK at that time of the evening.
An early television serial was The Grove Family on the BBC. 148 episodes were produced from 1954 to 1957. The series was broadcast live and only a handful of recordings were retained in the archives.
In the 1960s Coronation Street revolutionized UK television and quickly became a British institution. Another of the 1960s was Emergency Ward 10, on ITV. The BBC also produced several serials. Compact was about the staff of a women's magazine. The Newcomers was about the upheaval caused by a large firm setting up a plant in a small town. United! ran for 147 episodes and focused on a football team. 199 Park Lane was an upper class serial that ran for just 18 episodes in 1965. None of these serials came close to making the same impact as Coronation Street. Indeed most of the 1960s BBC serials were largely wiped.
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