# Soaps?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 13, 2001, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174 "2001-11-13T20:12:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![insider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@insider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insider)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174/1 "2001-11-13T20:12:25Z")

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What is the derivation of the term “Soap Opera”? Who first used the term?

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**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174/2 "2001-11-13T20:20:59Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> The term “soap opera” was coined by the American press in the 1930s to denote the extraordinarily popular genre of serialized domestic radio dramas, which, by 1940, represented some 90% of all commercially-sponsored daytime broadcast hours. The “soap” in soap opera alluded to their sponsorship by manufacturers of household cleaning products; while “opera” suggested an ironic incongruity between the domestic narrative concerns of the daytime serial and the most elevated of dramatic forms. In the United States, the term continues to be applied primarily to the approximately fifty hours each week of daytime serial television drama broadcast by ABC, NBC, and CBS, but the meanings of the term, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, exceed this generic designation.

There’s a lot more on this [here](http://www.mbcnet.org/ETV/S/htmlS/soapopera/soapopera.htm).

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**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174/3 "2001-11-13T20:22:43Z")

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Finally, a question in my field of expertise. 🙂

In the early days of serial radio dramas, most of the programs were sponsored and even produced by soap companies. In 2001, two soap operas, _Guiding Light_ and _As the World Turns_ are still produced by Proctor and Gamble, makers of Tide and hundreds of other related products. Since they were melodramatic “operatic” stories, intended to sell soap, they were called soap operas. I’m not sure who was the first to use the term, but it was probably a 1930’s newspaper columnist (_Guiding Light_ premiered in 1937).

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**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soaps/93174/4 "2001-11-13T22:36:57Z")

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This is not to argue that the 1920s radio show _The Goldbergs_ was the first example of the genre to be called a soap opera, but the programme was sponsored by Procter & Gamble.