The UK:
In the UK, the soap opera is one of the most popular genres of tv broadcasting there are, and most are broadcast during prime time and on the most popular channels.
Most UK soap operas focus on working-class communities. The most popular soaps are Eastenders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Neighbours, Home and Away and Doctors. Eastenders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street are the three soap operas that recieve the highest ratings of all week to week with Coronation Street generally being the most watched soap on British Television.
Coronation Street and EastEnders are popularly known as the "flagship" soaps, as they are the highest rating programmes for the BBC and ITV. If a show recieves poor ratings on a regular basis, that sometimes brings with it questions about the associated channel. The 'flagship' soaps are so popular nowadays they are not routinely scheduled against each other, however episodes of particular serials have clashed on some occasions, but only when an extended version of the show is screened.
The Beginning of Soaps:
Soap operas first began on radio and were firstly associated with the BBC only. The BBC continues to broadcast the world's longest-running radio soap, The Archers, which is aired on BBC Radio 4 and has been running nationally since 1951. It continues to reign in over five million listeners on average, which accounts for roughly 25% of the entire UK population listening to the radio at that time in the evening.
When Coronation Street began airing on ITV in the 1960's, it revolutionised UK television and it quickly became a British institution and household name. ITV also produced other soap operas in the 1960s such as Emergency Ward 10, about a hospital. The BBC produced a number of different soap operas in the 1960s. Compact was about the staff of a women's magazine and United! ran for 147 episodes and focused on a football team. 199 Park Lane was soap opera about upper class life that ran for just 18 episodes in 1965 however none of these soaps came anywhere close to making the same impact as Coronation Street did, with most of the soap operas broadcast in the 1960s being cancelled eventually.
In the 1960s Coronation Street's main rival was Crossroads. Crossroads was a daily soap opera that began in 1964 and was shown early evening on ITV. Crossroads was set in a Birmingham motel and although the series was immensely popular, its low technical standard and bad acting was mocked severely. By the 1980s its ratings had begun to fall, so the series launched several attempts to revamp the series and raise the ratings once more, which included expanding the setting of the soap to the surrounding area of the motel rather than just the motel itself, and making changes to the cast. These were unsuccessful however, and Crossroads was cancelled in 1988.
Later, in 1972, ITV began showing Emmerdale Farm (later renamed to Emmerdale) in a daytime slot and became Coronation Street's main rival. Emmerdale Farm had a Yorkshire rural setting, and due to the increased ratings in the 1980s, the soap was moved to a primetime slot. When Channel 4 was launched in 1982, it soon began showing it's own soap, Brookside, based in Liverpool which re-defined soap operas throughout the next decade. A few years later, in 1985, the BBC started airing London based soap opera, Eastenders. The show was an instant hit with viewers and critics, with the first episode attracting over 17 million viewers. There was much discussion among critics that the airing of Eastenders would mean the downfall of Coronation Street, however in 1994, the two soaps were scheduled opposite each other, with Coronation Street winning. For the next decade or so, Eastenders and Coronation Street have shared the spot of most viewed soap in the UK.
Until the 1970s, there were no daytime soap operas being broadcast on television in the UK, because daytime TV at the time was virtually non-existent. ITV begun broadcasting General Hospital during the day, although this eventually transferred to a primetime evening slot. Later, daytime TV slots were filled with a large amount of old Australian soap operas such as The Sullivans, A Country Practice, Richmond Hill and The Young Doctors, and these were eventually followed by Home and Away and Neighbours. Home and Away and Neighbours became very popular however, and they were moved from daytime to early evening slots in the late 1980s.
The 1990s
In 1995, Channel 4 introduced Hollyoaks, which was a soap opera with a youth focus, being on a local college. When Five launched in 1997, it came with it's own soap opera, Family Affairs, which first aired as a five-days-a-week soap.
Throughout the 1990s the long-running soap operas in Britain continued to flourish and all of them increased the number of weekly episodes transmitted by at least one, further defining soap opera as the leading genre in British television at the time.
The 2000s
Since 2000, heaps of new soap operas have continued to be developed. In 2000, daytime soap opera Doctors began to air on BB1. In 2002, BBC Scotland launched River City, which proved popular and replaced serial High Road, whose ratings had been poor, leading to it being cancelled in 2003. When Brookside was cancelled on Channel 4 in November 2003 after 21 years on the air, it left Hollyoaks as being the channel's flagship soap opera.
In 2001, Carlton Television produced a new version of old soap Crossroads featuring a mostly new cast, which was aired on ITV. It didn't recieve good ratings however, and was again cancelled in 2003. ITV also launched Night and Day in 2001, which was a new early-evening soap opera, however this too recieved low ratings, so was transferred to a late night slot before being cancelled in 2003. Family Affairs, broadcast on Five opposite the racier soap Hollyoaks never really achieved significantly high ratings. This lead to many dramatic revamps of the cast and style, and even the location over it's run, which saw a larger fan base form and the show won it's first awards in 2004. Despite all this though, Family Affairs was then cancelled in late 2005.
In 2008, ITV launched daily spin-off The Royal Today, which came from popular sixties drama, The Royal, which had been running in a primetime slot since 2002. Only a matter of days later, Echo Beach was launched alongside it's sister series and comedy Moving Wallpaper on ITV. Both The Royal Today and Echo Beach were cancelled after their first seasons due to poor ratings.
In 2004, the BBC created a radio soap opera for the BBC Asian Network called Silver Street.
For many years, UK soap operas only generally aired two nights a week, with the exception of that being the original series of Crossroads, which initially began as a five-day serial in the 1960s. In the 1980s things began to change as Coronation Street was upgraded to being shown three nights a week, which then expanded further to four nights a week in 1996. This trend was then followed by Eastenders in 1994, and then Emmerdale in 1997. Family Affairs ran five nights a week throughout it's entire run on Five. Imported Australian soap opera, Neighbours also airs five days a week, with each episode being aired twice a day on Five.
Today's UK soap operas are mainly shot on videotape in the studio using a multicamera setup. However UK soap operas feature a proportion of outdoors-shot footage in each episode—usually shot on a purpose-built outdoor set that represents the community the soap focuses on.
United States
Daytime serials
The first American soap opera Guiding Light first started as a radio drama in January 1937 and was then transferred to television in June 1952. Guiding Light was seen or heard nearly every weekday since it started up until it's cancellation in 2009, which makes it the longest story ever told. Due to this cancellation, the two oldest soaps running on American television are As the World Turns and General Hospital.
Due to the length of time these shows are shown on television for, it is not uncommon for multiple actors to play a single character over the years. It is also not uncommon for actors to be seen in the show playing a variety of different characters over the years. On the other hand, a number of actors have remained in their roles for a number of decades. Helen Wagner, who has played Nancy Hughes on As the World Turns since the shows debut in 1956, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the actress with the longest uniterrupted performance in a single role.
In the US, all the soaps known as soap operas are generally shown in the daytime. When soap operas first began airing in the US, they were only broadcast in fifteen-minute installments each day. Then in 1956, the first half-hour edition of a soap opera was broadcast on television, and thus aftet this, all soap operas that were shown were half-hour long by the end of the 1960s. When soap operas became extremely popular in the 1970s, most soaps were expanded to an hour long showing, due to popular demand, with one show in particular, Another World, being expanded to ninety minutes for a short time. Today, six out of the seven American soap operas air for sixty-minute each weekday. Only The Bold and The Beautiful still airs for 30 minutes.
Also in the early days of the soap operas, they were all broadcast live from a studio, most of which were shot in New York, creating a feeling of stage play to the episodes. In the 60s and 70s, several shows began taping in Los Angeles, such as General Hospital, The Young and the Restless and Days of our Lives. This made Los Angeles a more popular place to shoot, as filming at that time in New York was becoming costly to perform. By the early 70s, nearly all soap operas of that time had started being taped rather than being performed live. As the World Turns and The Edge of Night were the last to make this transition in 1975.
Traditional serials
In the beginning soap operas that were shown in the US, each found their way of telling the stories in certain environments. General Hospital told it's stories from inside the confines of a hospital. As the World Turns dealt mostly with the law practice of the main character and his wife. Guiding Light dealt with the main characters marital troubles. Search for Tomorrow, for the most part, told the entire story of the show through our main characters eyes. Days of our Lives was the story-telling of a doctor and his wife, later branching out to tell the stories of their children, too. The Edge of Night focused around the main character who was a police detective. In contrast to these fairly realistic and ordinary shows, was Dark Shadows which featured supernatural characters such as vampires, witches and ghosts.
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