Why do they call them soap operas?

Question

When nobody actually sings on them!

Answer 1

Because they are so dirty they need soap.
No lie - really back in radio days, they were all sponsored by soap companies like Proctor and Gamble, etc. so they had a commercial break for soap every few minutes.
Operas are not giving that name for the singing. What made operas different than a concert, was that an opera was a continuing story, and the songs all created a drama, i.e. Don Giovanni (Don Juan) and others. Soaps are a takeoff on the drama as innovated in an opera.

Answer 2

"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.

Soaps moved from radio to TV along with most entertainment forms in the 1950s. Despite the intervention of evil twins, presumed-dead spouses, vengeful lovers, and the occasional vampire, soap operas have been going strong ever since."

Answer 3

The term "Soap Opera" originated through the use of advertisers. In the early days of TV, a drama would be made possible through the advertising revenue of only a handful of advertisers. These advertisers were "soap" companies. The adverts normally had a woman singing some sort of jingle and that's how the term "soap opera" came about. It was down to soap companies using women that sung awfully, in their adverts.

Answer 4

When they first started out on radio. most of them were sponsored by the soap companies. this gave them a way to advertise before television. Thus they were called "soap opera's" and I guess the name just stuck.

Answer 5

Because of the big drama stories they tell because opera always tell a story.Usually these stories were sponsored by soap companies to appeal to the female viewers/listeners.

Answer 6

Back in the 1920s, they had daytime dramas on the radio/television which were sponsored by laundry deturgents.

It was slang to call them "Soap Operas"

Answer 7

Operas used to tell a story, and they were on during the day, and soap adverts were big, thus the term,...soap opera.

Answer 8

The name stems from the idea that when soap operas were on in the early fourties and fifties, they were brodcasted on radio that had soap manufactures such as Proctor and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and pepsodent as sponsors.

Answer 9

Nobody uses the soap neither!!! lol

Answer 10

Because they are 'soporific' (soap) in content, and the over-acting has an operatic feel to them?

Still watch them though!