Mondo Knows Facts
Soap operas were named after their sponsors
American serials were funded by soap and detergent companies Daytime serial dramas on American radio and television in the 1930s and 1940s were often sponsored by soap and detergent manufacturers, who wanted to reach housewives. Trade papers coined the term soap opera for them. The format, endless and cheap to make, became a fixture of daytime schedules. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: television, radio, 1930s
Soap operas were named after their sponsors: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- American serials were funded by soap and detergent companies. The figure is taken from Paley Center for Media, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.