A soap opera, daytime drama, or soap for short, is typically a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by "horse opera", a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns.
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.
Kim Hunter was an American theatre, film, and television actress. She achieved prominence for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which she reprised for the 1951 film adaptation, and won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City. First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. The show expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. In 2006, the series began airing previous episodes weeknights on SOAPnet until 2013, when it moved to TVGN. From July 1, 2013 until 2019, Pop aired previous episodes on weeknights. The series is also syndicated internationally.
Guiding Light was an American radio and television soap opera. Guiding Light aired on CBS for 57 years between June 30, 1952, and September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio between January 25, 1937, and June 29, 1956. With 72 years of radio and television runs, Guiding Light is the longest-running soap opera, ahead of General Hospital, and is the fifth-longest-running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program Grand Ole Opry, the BBC religious program The Daily Service (1928), the CBS religious program Music and the Spoken Word (1929), and the Norwegian children's radio program Lørdagsbarnetimen (1924–2010) have been on the air longer.
As the World Turns is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS for 54 years from April 2, 1956, to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created As the World Turns as a sister show to her other soap opera Guiding Light. With 13,763 hours of cumulative narrative, As the World Turns has the longest total running time of any television show. In terms of continuous run of production, As the World Turns at 54 years holds the fourth-longest run of any daytime network soap opera on American television, surpassed only by General Hospital, Guiding Light, and Days of Our Lives. As the World Turns was produced for its first 43 years in Manhattan and in Brooklyn from 2000 until 2010.
One Life to Live is an American soap opera broadcast on the ABC television network for more than 43 years, from July 15, 1968, to January 13, 2012, and then on the internet as a web series on Hulu and iTunes via Prospect Park from April 29 to August 19, 2013. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature ethnically and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social issues. One Life to Live was expanded from 30 minutes to 45 minutes on July 26, 1976, and then to an hour on January 16, 1978.
Irna Phillips was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent and actress. She is best remembered for pioneering a format of the daytime soap opera in the United States geared specifically toward women. Phillips created, produced, and wrote several radio and television daytime serials throughout her career, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the American daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon, William J. Bell and Ted Corday.
Loving is an American television soap opera that ran on ABC from June 26, 1983, to November 10, 1995, for a total of 3,169 episodes. The serial, set in the fictional town of Corinth, Pennsylvania, was co-created by Agnes Nixon and former actor Douglas Marland.
Santa Barbara is an American television soap opera that aired on NBC from July 30, 1984, to January 15, 1993. The show revolves around the eventful lives of the wealthy Capwell family of Santa Barbara, California. Other prominent families featured on the soap were the rival Lockridge family, and the more modest Andrade and Perkins families.
Edward Macdonald Carey was an American actor, best known for his role as the patriarch Dr. Tom Horton on NBC's soap opera Days of Our Lives. For almost three decades, he was the show's central cast member.
Donald Francis Michael Hastings is an American actor, singer, and writer best known for his 50-year role as Dr. Robert "Bob" Hughes on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. Hastings was the third actor to portray Hughes and is the longest serving living cast member of an American television soap opera, after the death of matriarch Helen Wagner of the same series.
Crawford Productions is an Australian media production company, focused on radio and television production. Founded in Melbourne by Hector Crawford and his sister, actress and voice artist Dorothy Crawford, the company, also known as Crawfords Australia, is now a subsidiary of the WIN Corporation.
One Man's Family is an American radio soap opera, heard for almost three decades, from 1932 to 1959. Created by Carlton E. Morse, it was the longest-running uninterrupted dramatic serial in the history of American radio. Television versions of the series aired in prime time from 1949 to 1952 and in daytime from 1954 to 1955.
A Woman to Remember is a soap opera which ran on the DuMont Television Network from February 21 to July 15, 1949. The show began on February 21 as a daytime series at 3 pm ET. However, starting May 2, the show aired Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 7:45 pm ET.
In television and radio programming, a serial is a show that has a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode-by-episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the complete run of the series, and sometimes spinoffs, which distinguishes them from episodic television that relies on more stand-alone episodes. Worldwide, the soap opera is the most prominent form of serial dramatic programming. In the UK the first serials were direct adaptations of well known literary works, usually consisting of a small number of episodes.
Himan Brown, also known as Hi Brown, was an American producer of radio and television programs. Over seven decades, Brown produced and directed more than 30,000 radio shows, for all of the major radio networks and syndication. He worked with such actors as Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles.
Perry Mason is a radio crime serial based on the novels of Erle Stanley Gardner. Broadcast weekdays on CBS Radio from 1943 to 1955, the series was adapted into The Edge of Night which ran on television for an additional 30 years.
A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines tele and novela. Similar drama genres around the world include diziler (Turkey), serial (India), teleserye (Philippines), lakorn (Thailand), téléroman, K-drama, J-drama (Japan), C-drama (China) and sinetron (Indonesia).
An Arab television drama or Arab soap opera is a television form of melodramatic serialized fiction. The musalsalat are similar in style to Latin American telenovelas. They are often historical epics about Islamic figures or love stories involving class conflict and intrigue. The word musalsal literally means "chained, continuous".
