Why Is It Called a “Soap Opera”?

Though soap operas often get a bad rap, they represent an important part of entertainment history. Smithsonian has described them as “[shaping] American culture” over the past 70 years, and they have certainly had their glory days, especially in the 1980s.

Now, we use the term soap operas to describe overly dramatic, long-running television shows. But the genre actually predates television altogether. They began as serialized dramas for radio in the 1930s, targeted mainly at homemakers whose husbands would be at work and whose children would be in school during the day, so they had free afternoons to themselves. Advertisements were par for the course on these radio dramas, and there’s one thing that every homemaker was supposed to need during this era: soap.

Constant advertisements for soap, detergent, and other everyday products during these daytime dramas led to the tongue-in-cheek nickname soap operas. However, companies found the medium so fruitful that they not only advertised within popular shows but later actually produced their own as well.

Proctor & Gamble, for example, sponsored radio serials like Ma Perkins (1933) and Guiding Light (1952), which had been hits for the medium, as well as TV shows like As the World Turns (1956). Robert E. Short, former production executive at Proctor & Gamble, described the early days of the soap opera experiment:

“Most of the shows were sponsored by just one brand. There were no other advertisers. The shows were created for the company to advertise the company’s products, and they were very successful. Procter & Gamble was the biggest programmer in the field. General Foods and General Mills also had programs of their own. The shows grew out of the creative departments of the advertising agencies. Some of the directors and producers were agency staff people, and they just created a production staff.”

Thanks to the efforts of pioneers like Irna Phillips, scriptwriter and radio actor behind hits like These Are My Children (1949) and Another World (1964), soap operas made their way from the radio to daytime television. These shows offered women a chance to enter the television industry as performers, which—with notable exceptions like Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy—was a field dominated by men at that time. They also brought the allegedly feminine realm of domestic drama to the fore, with lurid tales featuring affairs, secret children, death, and family squabbling of all kinds. 

The “opera” part of the phrase soap opera refers to these over-the-top plot lines, channeling the similar melodrama of traditional theatre-based operas. The word opera, however, doesn’t originate from any reference to drama at all. Instead, it comes from the Italian word opera, meaning any type of work or composition—serious or not. 

Daytime soap operas remain on the air, though usually without all the soap advertisements. Millions of people, and not just homemakers, still tune into the four that have been running for decades now—General Hospital (which debuted in 1963), Days of Our Lives (1965), The Bold and the Beautiful (1987), and The Young and the Restless (1973)—for their daily dose of cliffhangers and theatrics, making them a reliable staple in the television world.

Have you got a Big Question you'd like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

Read More Big Questions: