A History of Daytime Soaps

Ah, the soap opera – that palliative balm to housewives the world over. The evolution of the daytime soaps is a pretty fascinating story, spanning nearly a hundred years of popular entertainment, and in this article I’m going to take you back to the very beginning to see how this unique narrative medium grew into the staple it is today. So let’s climb into the Wayback Machine and trace the history of the daytime soaps!

It may surprise you to know that the first daytime soap to hit the American airwaves is still on today – Guiding Light debuted in 1937 as a radio drama, and aside from a brief break in the 1940s has remained on the air ever since, earning it the title of the longest-running fictional narrative in history. Starting out as the tale of a caring small-town preacher and the troubles of his flock, it has grown into the model of the daytime soap – a multi-threaded story with all sorts of dramatic undertones. Sadly, 2009 will be Guiding Light’s final season, drawing one of the greatest accomplishments in television history to a close.

The first daytime soaps, as said above, were on the radio, but the introduction and sudden boom of the television gave soap operas a perfect home. In the beginning, the soaps were broadcast daily in brief fifteen-minute installments, laying the groundwork for the glacially slow narrative pace that would become a hallmark of the genre. In the mid-50s, the first half-hour daytime soap debuted, and by the 1970s, when soaps were at the height of their popularity, they had expanded to one hour, every weekday.

Daytime soaps usually don’t focus on a single character, but rather an environment in which a large ensemble cast can come into conflict with each other – that way, over the decades-long running time of the series, players can be added and removed without too much trouble. However, as the genre evolved, fan response began to influence writing, and plots started to get more and more ludicrous, with characters returning from the dead, being abducted by aliens, and consulting dwarf witches (as seen on Passions, truly the greatest of the gonzo soaps).

Unfortunately, ratings for the daytime soaps have been on the decline since 2000, and many of the genre’s long-running stalwarts are finding themselves cancelled as studios seek to fill the airwaves with cheaper, less niche productions like game shows. However, the spirit of the form lives on in many nighttime dramas such as Desperate Housewives, which channels the salaciousness and bizarre plotlines into a once-weekly installment with brisker narrative pacing. The soap opera may be on its last legs, but its sudsy impact on American television will be felt forever.