Where did the name "soap opera" come from?!
Question: I mean, how come they are called that? I have been watching them for years and still don't know.
Answers: I mean, how come they are called that? I have been watching them for years and still don't know.
In the late 1940's, early 50's when television first begun to run, soap companies sponsered television shows. The shows would run from 15 mins to an hour. This programming was of course good for short, quick shows.
They called them Sopa Operas, because soap companies sponcered the programmer, and they were meladrama (opera).
This type of program was always sponsored by soap companies.
women used to watch them as they did laundry, and thus washed clothes, so that coined them "soap" operas (as in laundry soap)
A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. Programs described as soap operas have existed as an entertainment long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers as the show's sponsors. [1] These early radio serials were broadcast in weekday daytime slots when mostly housewives would be available to listen, thus the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience. [1]
The term soap opera has at times been generally applied to any romantic serial,[1] but is also used to describe the more naturalistic, unglamorous evening, prime-time drama serials of the UK such as Coronation Street.[2] What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a program a soap opera is that it, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode".[3] Soap opera stories run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger.
Evening soap operas sometimes differ from this general format and are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Additionally, evening soap operas and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera
when they started they were mostly sponsored by detergent companies, hence the name.