Daytime soaps are slowly dying off.

Their characters have survived murder plots, committed adultery, been in car accidents, gotten married and divorced, had illegitimate babies, forged friendships and alliances, lied, schemed, and betrayed those closest to them. Now, after all the drama, soap operas themselves are dying from old age. Slickly packaged primetime, the vast possibilities via internet for streaming movies, and social media are all luring viewers away and making soaps look stodgy, stilted, and slow.

In April, ABC announced that cancellation of two of its staple, long-running soaps, One Life to Live and All My Children. Although daytime soap operas have been declining in popularity for years, this decision is a death knell. The remaining soaps on the air are most likely living on borrowed time.

Serial stories got their start on the radio, before moving to TV where soaps got their name because many of the early advertisers were companies who made soap. Soaps became a staple of daytime programming in the 1950’s while many women were staying at home and kept them company as if the characters were actual friends.

Progressive in Their Time

Soaps broke new ground on many topics, including rape, domestic violence, and abortion. A typical viewer spent an hour following their favorite characters every day, invested in their triumphs and their heartbreaks. Story lines often took months to come to a head or be resolved and some fans felt so strongly about certain characters that they sent care packages to poor characters and accosted villainous actors in real life for their misdeeds on the small screen.

Time Magazine’s Television: Sex and Suffering in the Afternoon, reported that a break in programming for any reason, even when it was to announce the attempted assassination of President Ford, caused network switchboards to light up with calls from angry viewers. After the announcement in April 2011 canceling the two shows, fans have been up in arms – even imploring Oprah to save their beloved shows. She responds, essentially, that soaps have lived a good (financial) life, but they don’t make money and it was time to let them go.

Fans did however, get support from an unexpected, sentimental ally. Hoover vacuums pulled all of their ads from ABC in protest, and set up an email link for fans to air their unhappiness. Their vice president of marketing, Brian Kirkendall, cited the reason as “listening to what their customers wanted,” but admitted that there was another, more sentimental reason. His wife and mother, along with many employees at Hoover, were loyal viewers.

Some characters will never be forgotten. Salon’s Mary Williams lauds soap legend Susan Lucci as “one of television’s first unself-consciously feminist characters.” Onscreen she was a force for forty years, her character went after what she wanted without compunction or apology. Lucci was nominated for an Emmy more than 20 times, winning only once in 1999. Off screen, she was the first major television personality to have a legal abortion in 1973.

Man’s Best Friend

The soap format continued to grow in popularity for the next several decades and picked up legions of male viewers. After the advent of the VCR, even those who worked could tune in. In 1976, Time reported that daytime television was much more profitable than its primetime counterparts. Viewers came from all walks of life. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall took judicial breaks to watch Days of Our Lives, Sammy Davis Jr. guest starred on his favorite show Love to Life, and Texas Governor John Connally and Andy Warhol followed As the World Turns.

New Media, New Women

As new forms of media rose in popularity, soap viewership declined. No new daytime soaps have been created since 1999. By 2004, Ad Week was wondering where all the female viewers had gone. This spelled trouble as most of the male viewers had already moved on to other forms of entertainment. Women are working more today and have more sophisticated interests. Instead of developing a one-sided relationship with soap characters, viewers now have email, webcams, social networks, and online games in which to interact with people who actually talk back.

In the new millennium of reality TV, slick CSI animations, and big budget television productions, soaps have faded into the background. Primetime shows are shinier, more intense, and move faster, while daytime TV’s colors are fading, its snail’s pace too plodding for a new generation that wants shock, action, drama, and answers immediately. If a story line takes six months to resolve on a soap, that’s the equivalent of five and a half seasons of primetime programming. While many women are out being the breadwinners or focused more on super-educating their children to use every brain cell possible, women are realizing that not only are daytime soaps a major time suck, time is of the essence and TV takes up too much of their own prime time.

Infact, studies have been in place for some time showing the demise of the soap watching housewife. Back in 2006, the New York Times reported that about 75 percent of women 25 to 54 years old were either working or actively seeking a job, (up from around 40 percent in the late 1950’s), and the percentage of single mothers in the work force jumped to more than 75 percent from 63 percent. With the increase in out-of-home work comes the second challenge of keeping another company running smoothly: the home. Fit in an afternoon soap? Not going to happen.

The demise of the soap opera is upon us, (even the name makes us chuckle), and we are a new breed of woman who distributes time in the most efficient way possible. Educated or not, social media savvy or not, the modern day woman wants more if she’s going to sit down and waste time.

image: ellenm1

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