Soap Opera History

Why soap operas are called soap operas -
In the 1920's radio was going really well and broad casts wanted to get advertisements in to increase profits Radio stations got businesses who sold house hold goods to sponsor the radio shows. They were to appeal to female homemakers. All the networks had serials aimed at women and companies selling cleaning products wanted to sponsor the shows. In 1939 the press started to call the shows 'soap opera' as so many of them were sponsored by soap manufactures. - This information was taken from here - http://www.ask.com/questions-about/Soap-Opera-History

What the longest running soap is -
Eastenders = 19th February 1985 = 26 years

Emmerdale = 16th October 1972 = 39 years

Coronation Street = 9th December 1960 - 51 years

The Arches = 1st January 1951 = 60 years
- The Arches is the longest running British soap opera.
All of this information was taken from the soaps own websites.
The pictures that I have used show the different in the logo that were used for the soaps when they were first broadcast to the present day.

Key conventions found in British soap opera -
- there on every week
- they have the same times and days of which they are on each week
- each one is set in the same locations

These are pictures of the pubs used in Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Most watched episodes according to BARB figures -
Eastenders = 8.98 million
Coronation Street = 8.86 million
Emmerdale = 7.01 million
Casualty = 5.64 million
Holby City = 5.41 million
Neighbours = 1.37 million
Home and Away = 1.03 million

Most popular characters and story lines -
Eastenders =
- Phil Mitchell
- Ian Beale
- Sharon Watts
- Grant Mitchell
- Pauline Fowler

This is Phil Mitchell.



Coronation Street =
- The McDonald Family
- Sean Tully
- Raquel Watts
- Den Watts

This is the McDonald family.



Emmerdale =
- The Dingle Family
- Diane Sugden

This is the Dingle family.




Any Other information -
BBC 1 gets a weekly reach of 47,817 000's = 83.3%
ITV gets a weekly reach of 37,961 000's = 66.2%
Channel 4 gets a weekly reach of 35,262 000's = 61.5%
Channel 5 gets a weekly reach of 26,261 000's = 45.8%