In 1947, 'A Woman To Remember' was the first soap opera to be shown on television. 1997 marked 50 years of daytime dramas. "This is the form of entertainment closest to real life," Agnes Nixon observed, "because it's open-ended and every day is a new episode. We do 260 (originals) a year, with no repeats...The continuity is appealing. It's very intimate; it's like very close friends – one's family, almost." Jean Dalrymple remarked, "(Soaps) never end and always have the characters sitting down to talk things out over a cup of coffee. Sometimes I think the coffee industry subsidizes the daytime dramas." Of soap opera fans, one programmer shared, "It's pretty hard to get someone who's been watching ('As The World Turns') for 20 years to give that up and watch something new. In deference to me, (my mother) will look at 'Days of our Lives' occasionally but she won't commit to it. I asked her why and she said, 'Because I don’t know those people.'" One fan acknowledged, "After watching awhile, you feel like the characters are part of your life. You need to know what is happening with them." Paul Rauch pointed out, "We use stories about real people and their relationships."
The themes all soap operas sought to explore had been love, family values and social issues (adultery, abortion, alcoholism). In 1977, soap operas comprised 52% of daytime programming. Douglas Marland remembered, "Agnes and I met when she was a consultant to 'General Hospital' and I was the head writer. She was always there with the writer's point of view, and she saved my neck a lot of times in our meetings with Gloria Monty. We learned there that we think a lot alike about daytime television." Agnes believed, "I think most of the problems in the world come from people doing the wrong thing for the right reasons."
The first major revolution took place in 1975 when 'Another World' expanded from the traditional half-hour 5-day-a-week format to hour-long 5-day-a-week. Paul made the point, "If we succeed, I believe others will follow. That's the nature of television and the movies. If one new cycle, trend or departure from the norm succeeds, other follow." It was a success. "In the last 16 months," one commentator noted in 1976, "the 30-minute hold on nearly every program has been broken." The second major revolution took place in 1995 with the 21st century soap, 'The City'. It was a failure. "We went a little too far too fast," the network recognized. "It was too much of a revolution." Jane Elliot offered, "There are things about soap operas that shouldn't be changed." However "down the road," the show's producer voiced, "some brave soul is going to look at what we did with 'The City' and try to re-create it." By 2010, "the digital media has pretty much exploded. It's become very integrated with how we operate." Another added, "Social media has become mass media." Soap Opera Digest also mentioned, "People assume that people who watch the soaps are women...In this day and age, it couldn't be further from the truth."
