From "Ma Perkins" and "One Man's Family" in the 1930s to "All My Children" in the 1980s, the soap opera has capture the imagination of millions of American men and women of all ages. In Speaking of Soap Operas, Robert Allen undertakes a reexaminati

From "Ma Perkins" and "One Man's Family" in the 1930s to "All My Children" in the 1980s, the soap opera has capture the imagination of millions of American men and women of all ages. In Speaking of Soap Operas, Robert Allen undertakes a reexamination of the production and consumption of soap operas through the use of a unique investigatory model based on contemporary poetics and reader-response theory. Although a considerable amount of research has been conducted on these programs, Allen argues that soap operas remain a phenomenon about which much is said but little is known. Soap operas are different from most other media programming -- they appear formless, refuse to end, require little work on the part of the viewer, and bear no recognizable marks of authorship. For these and other reasons, soap operas resist explanation from both traditional aesthetic and empiricist social science perspectives. The daytime dramatic serials generate nearly a billion dollars in revenue each year for the three commercial networks. Allen discusses in detail the economic and institutional functions of these programs in addition to the context of their production. He also considers the historical development of the soap opera as advertising vehicle, narrative structure and "women's fiction." Speaking of Soap Operas is based on the author's own experiences as a soap opera viewer; extensive interviews with soap opera writers, producers, and actors; and the papers of Irna Phillips, creator of dozens of successful ratio and television soap operas. Drawing also upon trade publications, popular periodicals, and broadcast archives, this work is an important contribution to the field of mass communication.

The soap opera, one of U.S. television's longest-running and most influential formats, is on the brink. Declining ratings have been attributed to an increasing number of women working outside the home and to an intensifying competition for viewers' attention from cable and the Internet. Yet, soaps' influence has expanded, with serial narratives becoming commonplace on most prime time TV programs. The Survival of Soap Opera investigates the causes of their dwindling popularity, describes their impact on TV and new media culture, and gleans lessons from their complex history for twenty-first-century media industries. The book contains contributions from established soap scholars such as Robert C. Allen, Louise Spence, Nancy Baym, and Horace Newcomb, along with essays and interviews by emerging scholars, fans and Web site moderators, and soap opera producers, writers, and actors from ABC's General Hospital, CBS's The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, and other shows. This diverse group of voices seeks to intervene in the discussion about the fate of soap operas at a critical juncture, and speaks to longtime soap viewers, television studies scholars, and media professionals alike.

To Be Continued... explores the world's most popular form of television drama; the soap opera. From Denver to Delhi, Moscow to Manchester, audiences eagerly await the next episode of As the World Turns, The Rich Also Weep or Eastenders. But the popularity of soap operas in Britain and the US pales in comparison to the role that they play in media cultures in other parts of the world. To Be Continued... investigates both the cultural specificity of television soap operas and their reception in other cultures, covering soap production and soap watching in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Australia and Latin America. The contributors consider the nature of soap as a media text, the history of the serial narrative as a form, and the role of the soap opera in the development of feminist media criticism. To Be Continued... presents the first scholarly examination of soap opera as global media phenomenon.

Seminar paper from the year 1997 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: gut, University of Graz (Fachbereich Literaturwissenschaften), course: Soap Operas, language: English, abstract: A soap opera is a serialized drama which runs for 52 weeks of the year with continuous storylines dealing with domestic themes, personal or family relationships and a limited running characters. Soap operas or serials are open-ended ... Soap operas are one of the few genres where weddings, for instance, are not a happy ending but the beginning of a marriage that may be troubled or even doomed to failure. A dramatic program usually presented daily, with continuing characters and multiple plots. The action, which deals with contemporary problems and their solutions, continues from episode to episode called soap opera because many of the original sponsors were soap manufacturers. Also called daytime drama, soap, and soaper. 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 program to program 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. These definitions can be seen as a sort of introduction to the whole field of soap operas. In the following chapters I will deal with this topic in detail.

How can such an apparently trivial or even exploitative genre as soap opera be associated with the notion of empowerment for its viewers? Mary Ellen Brown argues that soap operas create and support a social network in which talk becomes a form of resistive pleasure. Undertaken as an ethnographic study in which the author is a member of the group, a fan and also a researcher, this book shows that engagement with soap operas creates an opening for women to serve as wedges into the dominant culture. This exploration into how hegemonic notions of feminity and womanhood are developed at one cultural site and how they can be accepted, resisted and negotiated in the process of consumption not only claims that hegemony is leaky, bu

The Soap Opera Paradigm is an engaging look at the pervasive use of daytime soap opera storytelling techniques in most television program genres, from prime time soap operas and reality shows to the nightly news, coverage of political campaigns, and sports programming. Drawing from a wealth of research, James Wittebols shows how programming techniques have changed over time and what roles media concentration and commercial influences have played in these changes. Visit our website for sample chapters!