How come soap Opera's are called Soap Opera's instead of just regular TV shows?

Question

I don't understand why. I know shows are put in categorys , but why are they not catoregized like regular TV shows.

Answer 1

Laundry detergent and dish washing soap companies used to sponsor the shows, much like infomercials do for the evening movies now.

Answer 2

I think your question has basically been answered. The dish detergent and clothes detergent manufactuers used to be totally responsible at one while for the production and livelihood of these 'operas'. They eventually were called "soap" because of the products sold - "operas" because they were filmed 'live'. Actors had no chance to 'mess up' or repeat takes. I have seen many, many in my lifetime - some that go way back to "The Secret Storm", "The Edge of Night" and I forget the one that had "Barnabas" - it was a ghoulish soap - my mom was a faithful viewer. My first was "The Young and The Restless." I started watching it in college - that was year circa 1970s/Still watch to this day......

Answer 3

Goes back to the old radio days when drama series were on the radio. A "soap" company was the sponsor. If I remember right there was a "The Lux Hour". Lux soap was a popular facial/body soap back then. Proctor & Gamble was a major sponsor in those days they had a lot (still do) of soap products for cleaning skin and clothes. All the shows had advertisements of "their" products written into the scripts.

Answer 4

While soaps themselves have complicated stories involving romance, betrayal, and dark family secrets, the story behind the term "soap opera" is simple and squeaky clean. In the 1920s, radio was booming, and broadcasters wanted to get advertisers in on the act to increase their station's profits. So radio stations convinced businesses that sold household goods to sponsor radio shows. To appeal to the main consumers of these items -- female homemakers -- the radio stations created the daytime serial drama format. The first radio soap opera ran in Chicago and was sponsored by a margarine company. Soon, all the networks had serials aimed at women, and companies selling cleaners and food products rushed to sponsor the shows. For example, Proctor & Gamble's Oxydol soap powder sponsored a popular serial drama in 1933. By 1939 the press started calling the shows "soap operas" because so many were sponsored by soap manufacturers. "Opera" had already been used in a non-musical sense in the '20s with "horse opera," which described Western movies.

Answer 5

A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. Radio entertainment has existed long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. (Soap refers to their radio origins in which various soap manufacturers where the show's sponsers.) What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is their open-ended nature. Plots 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 invariably 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. Some of the larger, disaster cliffhangers that affect a large proportion of the cast sometimes serve to bring all current storylines together.

Answer 6

The name soap opera originates from a company located in Cincinnati, OH called Proctor & Gamble. Today, P&G makes hundreds products, but they started out making soap. They wanted to promote their soap more effectively than the average radio commerical. So, they created one-hour dramas just so they could run advertisements along with it. Therefore, a "soap opera" was born.

Answer 7

I think I heard this a long time ago, but when soap operas started out, the major sponsor of most of the shows were ladies soap and maybe even laundry detergent (or something in that area). I can't remember where I heard it or if it's even true...but it would make sense.

Answer 8

Because when you categorize something its easier to know what people are talking about. Like if I said "hey did you see that TV show" you would be like well there's a million of them! but if I said "Hey did you see that Soap Opera" it narrows it down a bit more.

Answer 9

Because Proctor & Gamble, Colgate, and others are the major sponsors. These companies manufacture consumer goods such as dishwashing liquid, hand soap, and laundry detergent.

Answer 10

they all used to be sponsored by various brands of dish soaps and detergents in the early days of television