The longest running soap in UK is Coronation Street –
First broadcast on 9th December 1960, and has been running for 51 years.
Since 9th December 1960, up to and including the second episode transmitted on 1st July 2011 there have been 7637 episodes of Coronation Street.
The sets of the soap opera Coronation Street have changed since first broadcast in December 1960.As of 2011, it consists of early 20th century terraced houses, with a public house, The Rovers Return, at one end, and a corner shop at the other.
The other side of the street consists of a factory (underworld), a garage and three semi-detached houses. More than 100 writers have written for Coronation Street.
The top ten rated writers of Coronation Street were:
1 | Adele Rose | 455 episodes (+ 4 co-written) |
2 | Leslie Duxbury | 411 episodes (+ 2 co-written) |
3 | John Stevenson | 399 episodes (+ 1 co-written) |
4 | Peter Whalley | 379 episodes (+ 1 co-written) |
5 | HV Kershaw | 305 episodes (+ 1 co-written) |
6 | Julian Roach | 267 episodes |
7 | Barry Hill | 263 episodes |
8 | Brian Finch | 150 episodes (+ 1 co-written) |
9 | John Finch | 135 episodes (+ 2 co-written) |
10 | Martin Allen | 131 episodes |
Here is episodes of coronation street from 1960 and 2010.
The longest running soap in the world is Guiding Light.
Originally first called The Guiding Light.
Here is a radio broadcast and a tepisode of guilding light on Tv.
Soap operas have experienced high popularity over the past fifty years. The soap opera formula has been expanded, but not replaced, and this has assured its enduring success over fifty years in lots of countries.
Soap opera fans have no demographic bounds. Soap operas were first targeted at stay at home housewives to sell household products, the daytime drama audience now includes professionals of both sexes who unwind after a hard day at the office by watching their prerecorded soaps on tape when they get home. College students also have gatherings in their common rooms or dorms at collages and universities to watch the latest episode of their favourite soap opera.
The difference between today’s and yesterday’s daytime dramas and soap operas are evident in the present day use of exotic locations and diverse story lines. The longest running soap opera, Guiding Light, (as mentioned earlier) first aired on the radio and then took to television . The plots were homespun and the action took place around the Bauer’s kitchen table. Domestic problems were in the forefront and much of the action was resolved before they finished their second cup of coffee.
Tune into “GL” today and you will still see one of the Bauers, however, she married into a mobster family and is running off to San Cristobel (the foreign but friendly country that residents of Springfield seem to jet back and forth to on a moments notice) to escape the death penalty. And if you tune into a recent soap, Passions that began in 1999, you may think you are watching a sequel to Bewitched as a sorceress named Tabitha wrecks havoc on a quaint New England town called Harmony.
It is evident that the story lines have expanded from plain old adultery and the coffee pot.
Even with expanded travel, you can count on a soap operas action revolving around a small town. Children on soaps still age at the same rate as dog years (born one year, dating two years later) this phenomenon is called S.O.R.A.S. (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome). Of course, you can also rely on the people of any age to be beautiful, and families are usually wealthy except if they are brought in as a plot contrast such as Theresa Lopez Fitzgerald’s love for rich boy Ethan Crane on Passions, or the odd couple marriage of Harley Davidson Cooper to Phillip of the Spaulding mansion. Soaps still somewhat follow the “black hat, white hat” formula to designate the good guys from the bad guys. Although there are some blonde schemers on daytime, most of the “bad girls” are still brunette. In the standard romantic triangle you will usually have a dark haired women lose out to a fairer haired rival.
One exception has been the brunette and beautiful, Erica, played by veteran soap star Susan Lucci. She seems to prove that being blonde may not always be more fun, and although she has been very bad at times, she can be very good at getting what she wants. Whether good or bad, rich or poor, no character on a soap is seen with “bed head” or without makeup.
Another oddity you can count on is that everyone who works has a very important job but never seems to be working. This is more so now than in the past, even the hospital setting has become less of a backdrop for the action and more of a meeting place for the characters to react to a tragedy.
In the 1920s, radio was booming, and broadcasters wanted to get advertisers in on the act to increase their station's profits. So radio stations convinced businesses that sold household goods to sponsor radio shows. To appeal to the main consumers of these items -- female homemakers -- the radio stations created the daytime serial drama format. The first radio soap opera ran in Chicago and was sponsored by a margarine company.
Soon, all the networks had serials aimed at women, and companies selling cleaners and food products rushed to sponsor the shows. For example, Proctor & Gamble's Oxydol soap powder sponsored a popular serial drama in 1933. By 1939 the press started calling the shows "soap operas" because so many were sponsored by soap manufacturers. "Opera" had already been used in a non-musical sense in the '20s with "horse opera," which described Western movies.
Soaps moved from radio to TV along with most entertainment forms in the 1950s. Despite the intervention of evil twins, presumed-dead spouses, vengeful lovers, and the occasional vampire, soap operas have been going strong ever since.
Notes Taken From: http://www.allsands.com/history/soapoperahisto_tjc_gn.htm
BARB statistics show that for the week of the 11th of July the most watched episodes:
Eastenders = 8.98 million
Coronation Street = 8.86 million
Emmerdale = 7.01 million
Casualty = 5.64 million
Holby City = 5.41 million
Neighbours = 1.37 million
statistics from http://www.barb.co.uk/facts/index
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