Bücher von Marilyn J. Matelski

The first daytime dramas began as early as 1930, with Painted Dreams. Programmers soon discovered that housewives often controlled the purse strings, and soaps become an advertiser's gold mine. They now generate more than $900 million in network revenues annually. Around 50 million people (reportedly including congressmen and rock stars as well as two-thirds of all American television-watching women) tune in each weekday afternoon for a dosage of love, loss and libido via ""the soaps."" This scholarly study examines the soap phenomenon from a sociological point of view. Included in the analysis is classic research by Rudolf Arnheim, Herta Hartzog and Helen Kaufman as well as contemporary studies and previously unpublished research. The evolution of popular plotlines and characters, as assessment of reality in today's plots, which people watch soaps and why, specific plotlines for the 13 soaps presently aired, 40+ family trees illustrating program changes, the future of soaps--all are covered.

While the American soap opera is known primarily for its marketing value, producers, health professionals, politicians, and rebels elsewhere focus on the serials' potential for social change: African, Indian and South American serials offer information on family planning, child protection and AIDS; a Mexican telenovela parallels a government murder scandal--the program is so popular the state dare not censor it. In Russia, South American novelas are so popular that Boris Yeltsin manipulates programming to affect voters on polling day. Here is an examination of the economic and social impact of the soap opera, with projections for the future. A chapter for each of the nine regions of the world offers demographic statistics of major countries' audiences, radio and television usage, stations available, and synopses of the most popular serials.