The decline of the daytime soap opera in North America: a timeline

[TMC]

From r/television, this following timeline (by decade), hopes to document the factors behind the decline of daytime soaps in the US/Canada:

1970s

In 1970, there were 20 (!!!) daytime soap operas on the air on US broadcast television. You could argue that this was the peak of the genre's popularity. However, as we all know, when something is at its peak is also when the seeds of its decline are planted. The 1970s saw large numbers of women working outside the home during the daytime hours. As a result, what had heretofore been the core viewing audience of the daytime soap (homemakers) began to erode.

1980s

Along with its core audience of homemakers continuing to shrink, the 1980s saw the rise of cable television and home video. Now, if you were home during the daytime hours and had cable, you had more viewing options than just the three broadcast networks and their soaps. You could turn to ESPN and watch sports highlights, or watch a rerun of a prime-time show on the USA Network. Or, you could just go over to the video store and rent a movie on VHS and watch that instead of a soap.

1990s

The trends of the previous decades continued in the 1990s, but networks also discovered that other forms of daytime programming besides the soap opera (such as game shows and talk shows) were far cheaper to produce than a soap, even though their ratings were potentially lower. This led them to focus more on these types of programming. Furthermore, coverage of the OJ Simpson trial in 1994-95 pre-empted a lot of soaps, leaving viewers unable to follow the lengthy storylines of their favourite dramas. Once the trial ended, a lot of those viewers never came back to their soaps. Even more damaging, people saw that the Simpson trial was a real-life soap opera, and arguably more compelling than any scripted soap. This gave rise to a new genre of programming, reality television, which was also cheaper to produce than a soap. Technological innovations also inflicted pain on soaps, as the TiVo was introduced during this period, allowing people to record their favorite TV programs for later viewing instead of watching them in real time. This was really the first decade where you could say that daytime soaps were a dying genre. To wit: NBC launched two new soaps in the '90s (Sunset Beach and Passions). Both of them only lasted a few years before being cancelled.

2000s

The first decade of the new millennium witnessed the rise of the Internet and social media. This gave people even more entertainment options, as people could laugh at cat videos on YouTube or stay in touch with friends and family on Facebook. The audience for soaps fractured even further, and it became clear they were on their death bed. Port Charles (ABC) was cancelled in 2003, and the longest-running soap of them all, Guiding Light (CBS), was canned in 2009.

2010s

This was the decade where soaps really started taking the dirt nap, at least on broadcast TV. CBS's As the World Turns kicked the bucket in 2010, ABC cancelled All My Children in 2011, and then did the same to One Life to Live in 2012. This left only four daytime soaps on the air (Days of our Lives on NBC, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful on CBS, and General Hospital on ABC). It was also during this decade that streaming television services like Netflix became mainstream, so now people could binge on oodles of compelling programming and not even touch traditional television networks.

Are any of the facts inaccurate or other factors that were missed?

[80sTrivia]

Also, the budgets started to be cut drastically for the soaps in the late-90s. This meant that all the big budget cliff-hangers and weddings that involved a majority of the soaps characters and the glamorous on-location shots in places like Paris, Venice or the Caribbean were over. The writers were paid less, so there was less incentive to write creative storylines.

Many of the veteran actors from the shows were sidelined, which made longtime fans stop watching. Fans watched the shows for the interactions with characters they considered family, so when the "family" element of soaps diminished, people tuned-out. High turn-over with writers and producers left long-time characters unrecognizable and not-relatable to committed fans.

Now, even the primetime soaps from other countries are suffering. Neighbours has been a staple on Australian tv for 37 years, but was recently cancelled. The show was mainly funded by a network in Great Britain where the show was very popular for a long time, but with ratings down, the UK network axed the show, and there simply isn't enough money from the Australian network to keep it going and still make a profit. Sad.

I envision a day not-too-far into the future when there will no longer be any soaps on US network television. They don't earn money anymore, and are challenging to produce on a budget. I haven't watched any of the daytime soaps in well over a decade, since As the World Turns was cancelled. I watched Y&R for many years. When I recently tuned in to catch an episode after well over a decade, it didn't make any sense to me and was practically unwatchable! With people being even more distracted today than ever, it's only a matter of time...

[TMC]

You Won’t See This Again #4: A New Network Daytime Soap Opera

In 1970, there were 19 network daytime soap operas on the air. In 2016, they are only 4 left (General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, The Young and The Restless, and The Bold and The Beautiful). What happened in the past 46 years that helped make soap opera an endangered species? Plenty.

First off, the one income families with mom home running the household while making time watching soap operas has become an endangered species in its own right. Secondly, television is more fragmented when you add the hundreds of channels of television that doesn’t include the streaming services that compete for eyeballs for TV viewing. Thirdly, there is no longer the amount of advertising dollars out there (especially from laundry detergents that coined the soap opera moniker) to support it. Fourthly, its expensive to broadcast soap operas and reality shows and talk shows are so much cheaper to produce and air.

Even with a fragmented television audience, the reason that there are still 4 soap operas on the air is because they still get decent ratings. The reason why networks won’t be adding other shows on the air is cost. There is a tremendous cost to put a soap opera into production and the reason most fail is because of ratings. Why would a network launch a show (whether they are the producer or not) when it takes years for a show to garner an audience? The last successful launch of a soap opera was The Bold and The Beautiful and it helped that its sister series The Young and The Restless was its lead-in and rated #1. The last network soap opera launch was Passions in 1999.

It’s cheaper for the network to launch and broadcast reality shows, game shows, cooking shows, court shows, and talk shows. There’s not enough patience on the network to broadcast a soap opera that is expensive and takes years to get attention especially when it’s just cheaper to resurrect an old game show like Let’s Make A Deal.

Television is a business and it’s jut better business sense for them to air cheaper programming when the viewers are no longer there to support a soap opera.

[Yong Fang]

I think one thing was that mostly women (housewives) watched these shows, and because of the economy, women were forced into the workplace, so less and less of them were at home watching Soap Operas.

Second, I think the networks have seen how expensive soaps were to make (many actors, writers, production costs, only showing an episode once with no rerun value). It is just much cheaper to have talk shows, cooking shows, syndicated programming.

Third, yes the dynamics of television have changed, forever. I can honestly see withing twenty years of people not buying a television anymore in favor of Ipads and mobile devices. I live abroad and if I ever move home, I wont have a television. But it goes back to how expensive Soap Operas are and the rate of return. It has turned into a negative paradigm.

[CJMD03]

There’s also simple entropy. Sometimes a show simply runs out of ideas and the time comes to cancel them.

[TMC]

What killed the American soap opera and will it ever be revitalized?

Q: What killed the American soap opera and will it ever be revitalized?

Talk shows and “judge” shows.

Seriously.

It was cheaper and easier to create television talk programs and pseudo-reality court programs than it was/is to create scripted television five days a week. Production companies simply had to find a popular celebrity who was on hard times, give him or her a microphone and before you knew it an audience adopted them. If they failed, then throw them away and get a new model who wouldn’t. Even better when a minor or unknown performer like Jerry Springfield or Sally Jesse Raphael hit as they were “less expensive” early on and thus made for greater profits.

“Judge” shows were even greater cash cows as they could be filmed inexpensively, they barely required casts, and they were so popular that nearly every media market was airing at least one daily. In certain cases, like the People’s Court, you could air an original episode and a rerun and still clean up in the ratings. And even though the judges (Especially “Judge” Judy) became more expensive, the series themselves remain low cost to create and are still big moneymakers.

Soap operas:

• Were/are costly as far as talent and producers
• Were limited to a single network
• Couldn’t be shown in reruns
• Have run into music rights issues, especially series from the 1970s and 1980s when they were re-aired on the SOAP network.
• Couldn’t recoup production expenses by being sold into syndication packages.
• As time went on, one by one they began to fall away until now in 2026 there are only four remaining with three still airing on networks, while a fourth (NBC’s only offering) Days Of Our Lives strictly airs on its streaming service, Peacock.

Cheaper television offerings with greater syndication flexibilities are what killed soap operas, querent.

They won’t be coming back.