The power of ABC’s soap lineup was made especially evident in the lead-up to the 1984 Summer Olympics, to which ABC had the broadcast rights. A market for soap-themed merchandise also developed past its earlier burst around Dark Shadows, now licensing novelizations, board games, and clothing, becoming an additional revenue stream for soap producers, a “bonanza,” according to ABC.
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These programs were envisioned as TV versions of the successful soap magazine market, which had grown throughout the 1970s and by the early 1980s touted its younger and more affluent readership. In 1982, syndicators marketed at least five soap-themed talk shows. The first-run syndication market was also heavily influenced by soaps. Even without sustaining its prime-time lead of the previous decade, ABC was the most profitable network in the early 1980s due to its daytime riches.
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As of 1983, ABC Daytime was so lucrative as to be generating 50 percent of the full network’s profits. Especially notable was the rise of ABC to the position of highest rated in daytime, a steady climb initiated in 1978 and largely dependent on a soap lineup that had not even begun until 1963. Their ultimately short-lived dominance reveals the tenuousness of the appealing fantasy they offered.īy the late 1970s, all three broadcast networks had become serious competitors in the daytime ratings and the advertising revenue they accrued. The pleasures of the 80s soaps spoke to real desires and needs shared by a wide cross section of the American public. However, the troubling realities that had yet to be addressed in American society-not only income inequality and imbalances of gendered power but also exclusions of race and sexual identity-would prove impossible to stave off. Imaginings of young, heterosexual supercouples, nearly always white, falling in love against backdrops of pop music as they embarked on great adventures, made for compelling viewing. The seeds of the soaps’ cultural and economic decline lay dormant within this moment of unprecedented success, as the network era began its gradual wane and the fantasies on-screen proved as precarious as the daytime profit margins. But instead of the social and political concerns that had defined so much of the network era soaps, the challenges faced by soap characters in the 80s tended to lack explicit connection to the issues of the day, promising instead a turn away from such matters. The generic hybridization and broadened audiences of soaps across the 60s and 70s magnified and peaked in the early 80s. Not only did action adventure and science fiction plots infiltrate the narratives, but the styles and sensibilities of comedy, music video, and the fairy tale also made appearances.
The pleasures of the ’80s soaps spoke to real desires and needs shared by a wide cross section of the American public.ĭaytime soap opera had been long invested in realist drama, but in the 80s many of daytime’s highest-rated serials took a fantastical turn. Never again would soaps be as lucrative for the networks, or as prominently Soaps remained profitable across this decade, but the gradual decline in their earning power from 1984 on would be permanent. By 1984, the networks’ yearly daytime revenues would reach their all-time apex, just shy of $1.25 billion in ad sales. The frenzy at the Annex typified the status of the US daytime soap in the early 1980s, with new technologies like VCRs, new social identities like “working women,” and new trends in soap storytelling, like the fantasy-filled exploits of young romantic pairs, helping daytime drama reach an unprecedented peak in profitability, popularity, and cultural legitimacy.
The customers were working women and men, unable to see the soap during the business day, and drawn to a continuing drama featuring adventure, romance, even science fiction, as Luke and Laura, the “supercouple” at the center of the story, sought to stop the bad guys from freezing the world. Impressed by the turnout, the Annex even began playing back the week’s five episodes on Sundays, turning its “ General Hospital marathon” into a daylong event, accompanied by food and, when the episodes ended, live music to keep the party going. That evening during happy hour he would play the episode on the TVs of the Pierce Street Annex, selling drinks to the after-work crowd eager to follow the events in the fictional Port Charles, New York. With his new Betamax recorder, he would videotape General Hospital each weekday afternoon. In 1981, one Washington, DC, bar owner found a unique way to bring in customers.