Without soaps, we wouldn’t have melodramas or reality shows. Without soaps, we wouldn’t have many of the TV tropes and shows we love to stream and binge-watch. Cliffhangers, serials, vixens — in television storytelling, all come from soaps.
Network television would not exist if not for the financial success of soap operas, according to Elana Levine, author of Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. During the 1970s, Levine said soaps brought in 75% of the networks’ revenue.
“Soaps were a legitimate kind of pop culture sensation. As a result, the networks are able to charge more for those ad slots,” she said. “It’s a way to reach young people in particular for a time. [Networks] were willing to pay more, because what they were paying was still a whole lot less than what primetime TV cost them, in terms of advertising time.”
Ad sales on soaps bore the load of a broadcaster’s overall business model, even as production costs inevitably increased. Production costs for a soap opera, Levine said, were “still never at the level of what it cost to make a primetime show.”
The decline of soaps can’t be attributed to a singular event. Over time, viewers’ habits changed and how we consume television evolved, from the VCR to streaming. Soaps are not dead, though, and there are good reasons why they have endured.
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Soaps take the lead on nuanced storylines about queer life
Before the mainstreaming of Ellen and the hit show Will and Grace, soaps did their best to bring tenderness to LGBTQ+ storylines. That’s the nature of the form: It gives room for anyone and everyone to be complex, fleshed out, loved and hated all at once.
From supporting roles to legacy characters to complex depictions in their full humanity, from respectability politics to sometimes making missteps, soaps have found ways to evolve their depictions of queer life.
Ryan Phillippe played a gay teen in the 1990s on One Life to Live. Eden Riegel played Bianca, Erica Kane’s gay daughter in the 2000s on All My Children.
Today, progress looks like a villain, according to Days of Our Lives actor Greg Rikaart.
“I came on as the ‘gay villain,’ if you will, and to me, that felt like the ultimate equality, in that I didn’t have to just say the right thing and follow the rules in order to be palatable to the audience,” he said. “And when I would get blowback from some people … I would just argue all those things: That that is further pushing the envelope open by saying, ‘Yeah, we can be multifaceted. We don’t all have to be good guys.’ ”
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Black actors don’t want to be your sidekick
From Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee on The Guiding Light to the first Black super-couple, Jesse and Angie on All My Children, Black soap actors have been on the canvas.
According to an executive at CBS, Black women overindex as soap watchers, which has led to the first new daytime soap in decades. Beyond the Gates debuted with a core Black family in February 2025. It’s an exciting time to be a Black soap fan.
Even though there’s been Black representation, Black writers and actors have often had to push to be more than sidekicks, according to soap writer Shannon Peace.
“You see the faces; they’re there,” Peace said. “But what are the storylines? Why do we still feel often like they’re being backgrounded or there being support staff, to prop [up] other characters or other families? And when I say other characters or other families, I mean white characters or white families.”
Peace said she doesn’t see that problem in primetime television, but it still exists in daytime.
“I feel in primetime mode, for the most part, they’ve done away with a Black sidekick, with a Black friend — that Black best friend — and you have Black characters in meaningful front-facing roles that are driving story. I don't see that in daytime.”
You can listen to this podcast episode by following “Making: Stories Without End” on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts, NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes drop every Tuesday for six weeks starting April 8.
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In the world of soaps, women’s issues take front-burner status
Irna Phillips created the cliff-hanger in broadcast storytelling and perfected the serial drama, first in radio, then on television. She mentored the creators of All My Children, One Life to Live, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. The latter two remain on television today. Phillips also created the television vixen, an archetype first seen on soap operas that still endures.
Agnes Nixon and married couple William and Lee Phillip Bell worked for Phillips in Chicago. Nixon was head writer of The Guiding Light. In 1962, she wanted to do a cancer storyline, about how uterine cancer is curable if caught in time. Doctors said women proactively asked for pPap smears after watching the character Bert Bauer struggle with her health. The Bells also ushered the sexual revolution into soaps in the 1970s, with glitz and glamor and pushing the envelope on sexuality.
Soap operas created complex and groundbreaking women-centered storylines. In 1964, Another World ran an abortion storyline. In 1971, All My Children’s biggest vixen, Erica Kane, was a married pregnant model who didn’t want to be a mother. That abortion storyline was disruptive because the character was not seen as the “right” woman to tell an abortion story. Rape storylines on soaps have played out for decades because the form allows real-time nuance with storytelling. Nothing is ever wrapped up in one “Very Special Episode.” The uniqueness of soaps, airing five days a week, allows for pioneering storytelling.
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Meet Irna Phillips: The Queen of Daytime
Soap operas have long been trivialized as low-brow women’s entertainment. Even the term “soap” is pejorative when describing television. But there’s a deeper story to tell about the genre that changed storytelling on the small screen.
Irna Phillips doesn’t get enough credit for her creation. She’s the Chicago woman who birthed the daytime serial for radio in the 1930s and ushered it onto television in the 1950s. Phillips established staples in the genre like the cliff-hanger; she was a prolific writer who knew the daytime audience wanted to see their own problems in stories. As she summed it up in 1947: “[T]heir own conflicts, their own heartache, their hopes and their own dreams. Everything isn't happiness, is it? No.”
Beyond the melodrama and romantic escapism, soaps took bold risks, embracing social consciousness with groundbreaking women-centered storylines.
“Daytime dramas have grappled with social change and offered thoughtful explorations of romantic and familial relationships to an extent rarely seen in evening schedules, with controversial subject matter airing to little notice and thereby little upset,” said soap scholar and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Elana Levine.
Whether you know it or not, soaps are a foundation of U.S. television. They’ve given us the medium’s longest-running scripted series — and worlds that do not end.
What Natalie read:
“Afternoon Delight: Why Soaps Still Matter” by Carolyn Hinsey
“Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History” by Elana Levine
“The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era” edited by Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik and C. Lee Harrington
“Worlds Without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera” from the Museum of Television and Radio
Natalie Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Follow her on X at @natalieymoore.
USA