In this essay I will be writing about the history of soap operas. Soaps started in America, they use to take their names from the American radios. Companies who made soap powders originally sponsored them. Today they prefer to call soap operas serial dramas. Producers thought that calling serial dramas, soap operas gave them a negative reputation in that they do not sound like serious dramas
Coronation St was first shown in December 1960. In the beginning a pilot of 13 episodes was made by Granada television at that time it was a fairly new TV production company. These TV programs were only shown in the north-west England on Monday and Friday evenings. In May 1961 Coronation St taken by the network, which meant it, was shown all over national television. On Friday evenings in the early days transmission was live. Therefore if actors got their line wrong or they forgot it they had no second chance. The Monday soap episode was screened straight after the live transmission. After that the TV programmes was an instant successes to television, the two episodes that were on a week quickly became one of the most popular TV programmes on the ITV network. This was despite the fact that many critics thought that a story based in everyday northern working class lives, might be too depressing for public.
Characteristics of the Street
An example of a genre known as a kitchen sink drama is “Coronation St”, it is normally shown four times a week. A kitchen sink drama is a film or a play with a domestic setting, which is mainly about the lives of ordinary people. During the 1960s many of the films and plays made by the British cinema industry took ordinary working class life as their theme or script. For example, a kind of loving Saturday nights and on Sunday mornings, Billy Lair and the sporting fun life where films that were set in the popular northern towns, which featured and played lives of ordinary people
Many people feel that the real attraction of life on the street is that it is character based, this means it mainly relies on strong and confident characters, whom the audience can identify or recognise, than on dealing with issues. This is fairly true about female characters. Since Tony Warren created the series, it has traditionally been centred or focused on women to be strong and out going, forceful personalities. Coronation St is the worlds longest running television drama serial. It also transmitted in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of Europe, however it is a world away from US soaps such as Days Of Our Lives and Bold and The Beautiful. The soap was written from characters view point rather than taken by other soaps
Harry Elton producer told Tony Warren to write about something he knew and understood and Tony Warren was given 24 hours to come up with something that would take Britain by storm and it was the first episode of Coronation Street. Coronation St went into production with twelve episodes then thirteen, if the programme was not a success the street would be bulldozed. After the great success of Coronation St other soaps were created but the second most popular soap was Eastenders. People think that Eastenders deals with more serial drama life wife beating, drugs prostitution and sex. Eastenders was created in the 1980s.
Conclusion
Eastenders and Coronation Street have been a great success in Europe and other countries in the world, characters have become famous and a household name although not famous in every country who do not get presented these soaps.
This brings my essay to a conclusion and I have discovered that media is a big part in people’s lives, media is a piece of history and the future.
