How would you account for the continuing fascination the British television soap operas have for such a large and diverse audience?

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How would you account for the continuing fascination the British television soap operas have for such a large and diverse audience?

The name soap operas dates back to the 1930s when daytime drama programmes were broadcast on radio in the US.  They were targeted directly at a female audience (presumably housewives) and so soap manufacturers sponsored the programmes to advertise their brands to their primary consumers.  Soaps have always been extremely melodramatic with high emotional content, exploring the domestic and personal worlds of their characters.  

For a soap to appeal to a large and diverse audience it has to involve characters that will appeal to a wide range of people.  There has to be a character that has similar traits to people known by a viewer for the viewer to really engage in the soap.  For example, if you look at characters in Eastenders, you have “the helpful problem solver” in Dot Cotton and quite the opposite to her is “the ruthless villain” type character in Phil Mitchell.  Phil Mitchell is a character that everyone can relate to as everyone knows someone who is a bit of a rogue and slightly evil.  Soaps also need a large number of characters so that they can continually rotate plot lines and therefore keep viewers interested in the soap by producing new stories in every episode.   Characters that an audience enjoy watching are ones that they can build up a love hate relationship with.  Ian Beale from Eastenders is an example, when things are not going his way you begin to feel sorry for him but when he is successful he is arrogant and rubs it in his fellow character’s face’s and he then becomes an annoying character.  There have been occasions when the audience have confused reality with the soap world e.g. the Release Deirdre campaign that was ran by the Sun.  It is instances like these that show how popular some characters can be to all members of a large and diverse audience.  People can also develop a real-life hate for characters as when these characters have merely been shopping in the supermarket, people have threatened them because of their on screen character’s storyline!  

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By introducing dramatic and sometimes extreme storylines, a producer can capture the attention of a large audience.  The typical melodramatic characteristic of soap is the notorious cliff hanger e.g. the sight of Phil Mitchell lying on the ground after being shot by a fellow character, not known to the audience.  This is a clever media technique that entices the viewer into watching the following episodes that will reveal who was involved.  It is a good way of enticing all members of a large audience into watching a soap as it involves an occurrence that could happen to any member ...

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