You Know Your Life is a Soap Opera If... by Gerry Waggett

The hospital was locked down into quarantine while battling Lassa fever. “With everything going on in the world right now, it's interesting to remember that the storyline that got me hooked concerned the outbreak of a disease. “I started watching ‘General Hospital’ in 1979,” recalls the Harvard graduate about the medical drama, created by Frank and Doris Hursley, which debuted on April 1, 1963, and is now the longest-running American soap opera in production and the longest-running entertainment program in the history of ABC-TV. Waggett – who has published 11 books including “The Ultimate Days of Our Lives Trivia Book,” “The Official General Hospital Trivia Book,” “The Ultimate The Young and the Restless Trivia Book” and “The Soap Opera Book of Lists” – says he first discovered soap operas when he was a student at Boston College High School. Today, four daytime soap operas remain in production – “General Hospital,” seen on ABC-TV, ABC.com and Hulu “Days of Our Lives,” airing on NBC-TV and NBC.com and “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” both broadcast on CBS-TV, CBS.com and CBS All Access.

When CBS-TV canceled “As the World Turns” in 2010 after 54 years on the air, it was the last P&G-produced show. The term “soap operas” was coined because the programs were often sponsored by soap manufacturers like Procter & Gamble. That’s been the case since the first American soap opera, “Painted Dreams,” debuted on Chicago radio station WGN in 1930, followed the next year by the first nationally broadcast radio soap opera, “Clara, Lu, and Em,” on the NBC Blue Network.Īiring five days a week, as they had on radio, with one episode leading into the next to create continuous stories of melodrama, romance, break ups, make ups, and more, soaps – including “Love of Life,” “Guiding Light,” “Search for Tomorrow,” and “The Edge of Night” – became fixtures on network television beginning in the 1950s. “The cliffhanger nature of soap operas, however, leaves you looking forward to what’s going to happen the next day.” Waggett by telephone recently from his home in Dorchester.

“One of the biggest problems right now is that one day can drift aimlessly into the next,” explained pop culture writer Gerard J. So it’s reassuring, when our lives are anything but routine, that the soaps are still there to entertain us and provide a much-needed diversion from the pressures of these uncertain times. Daytime dramas, better known as soap operas, have been providing American audiences with an escape from the routine of their lives for 90 years.

You Know Your Life is a Soap Opera If... by Gerry Waggett