Emergency – Ward 10 Emergency – Ward 10 Emergency – Ward 10 is a British medical soap opera series shown on ITV between 1957 and 1967. Like "The Grove Family", a series shown by the BBC between 1954 and 1957, "Emergency – Ward 10" is considered to be one of British television's first major soap operas. The series was made by the ITV contractor ATV and set in a fictional hospital called Oxbridge General. Growing out of what was originally intended to be no more than a six-week serial (entitled "Calling Nurse Roberts"), the series became ITV's first twice-weekly evening soap opera. "Emergency –
Soap opera soap opera advertisers pay the most for. Those who might watch in workplace breakrooms are not counted, as Nielsen does not track television viewing outside the home. The rise of cable and the internet has also provided new sources of entertainment during the day. The genre's decline has additionally been attributed to reality television displacing soap operas as TV's dominant form of melodrama. An early term for the reality TV genre was "docu-soap". A precursor to reality TV, the televised 1994–95 O. J. Simpson murder case, both preempted and competed with an entire season of soaps, transforming viewing habits and