Soap+Operas'+Appeal

Advertising consumer products to the largest demographic of household consumers appealed to the sponsors of the soap opera, but it was the storylines of these programs that drew the audience to listen. These daytime serials promised “real life,” “truly human” stories about “typical Americans” that served both the emotional interests of the listeners and the commercial interests of advertisers.

The daytime serial focused primarily on women’s lives, particularly family relationships, domesticity, marriage, and sexuality. The drama that propelled the storylines of these serials most often focused on the struggle of the protagonist to mediate the tension between marriage and career or to deal with the fight for dominance or dependency between the genders (Hilmes 170). The most common situation for the soap opera heroine involved feeling out of place, especially in terms of social class, within her marriage (Loviglio 78). In //Betty and Bob//, Betty was married to Bob, the son of a millionaire who cut off the young couple to signify his displeasure over their union. In //Our Gal Sunday//, “an orphan girl from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado” married “England’s richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope.” Each week the program addressed the question: “Can this girl from a mining town in the West find happiness as a wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?” Michele Hilmes in //Radio Voices// suggests that the possession of wealth or social status served “as a symbolic substitute for the gender basis of social power” (172). Even though the situation of these daytime serials might not contain realistic true-to-life scenarios, the female listener would be able to connect because of her own “limited ability to survive economically outside marriage” (Hilmes 172).

In addition to having storylines women could connect to, these programs featured strong female characters often in the role of the protagonist. The typical heroine was unattached to a man, either because she was single, widowed or separated. If she were married her husband would not have represented a source of strength but rather a source of problems that the heroine must deal with. Male characters within these dramas filled ancillary roles usually as love interests and were often “problematic to some degree” (Hilmes 171). Often male characters would be “unstable, disabled, or criminal”; the most common disabilities were “blindness, crippling diseases or accidents…,amnesia, brain injuries, and other mental dislocations” (Hilmes 171, 173). The portrayal of men as subservient might have appealed to the American housewife as it was the only place in America where it would have occurred.

Although few listeners could claim to have experiences similar to those in the soaps, audience research suggested that the “emotional pain” of the characters “struck listeners as “true-to-life’” (Loviglio 79). Herta Herzog from the Office of Radio Research at Columbia University found the top three reasons listeners gave to tuning in to soap operas was “emotional release (‘a chance to cry’); commiseration (it ‘made them feel better to know that other people have troubles, too’); and as ‘a source of advice’ about their own problems” (Loviglio 79).

The format of the soap opera also increased it appeal. The slow pace of the storylines, which often took days to recount the activities of a 24-hour period, made “the story easier to follow should a devoted housewife have missed a day or be cleaning an upstairs bedroom when a crucial scene occurred” (Nachman 368). Nearly all soap operas opened with a recap to fill-in any missing information a listener would need to know before the show proceeded and ended with a teaser for the next episode. This fifteen minute format for the show and the announcer’s introduction and conclusion to the episode made it the perfect program for the busy housewife.

The storylines, the characters, and the format of soap operas attracted lower and middle-class women confined to their homes during the day. In addition to selling products, soap operas sold women “hope for a more attentive spouse, a more appreciative, less selfish child, a more committed lover, or a less meddlesome parent” (Nachman 375). Soaps not only provided an escape, but they also made women’s luckless or lonely lives seem less bleak than many of those on the air.


 * Pushing Cultural Limits? **