Soap opera Soap opera A soap opera is an ongoing drama serial on television or radio, featuring the lives of many characters and their emotional relationships. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas being sponsored by soap manufacturers. BBC Radio's "The Archers", first broadcast in 1950, is the world’s longest-running radio soap opera; the world's longest-running television soap opera is "Coronation Street", first broadcast on ITV in 1960. The first serial considered to be a "soap opera" was "Painted Dreams", which debuted on October 20, 1930 on Chicago radio station WGN. Early radio series such as "Painted Dreams" were broadcast in
Soap opera oil boom, premiering on September 27, 2015 during the 2015-16 TV season. The telenovela, a shorter-form format of serial melodrama, shares some thematic and especially stylistic similarity to the soap opera, enough that the colloquialism "Spanish soap opera" has arisen to describe the format. The chief difference between the two is length of series; while soap operas usually have indefinite runs, telenovelas typically have a central story arc with a prescribed ending within a year or two of the show's launch, requiring more concise storytelling. Spanish-language networks, chiefly Univision and Telemundo, have found success airing telenovelas for the growing U.S.