The Trauma of TV's Troubled Soap Families

Twenty million viewers, by TV network estimates, follow the daily tribulations of daytime soap opera characters. Audience identification can be so complete that viewers send in gifts for drama brides or expectant mothers, and sympathy messages for those bereaved. A veteran player said recently: I get letters from fans who have been writing for the entire time I've been on the show... . (Drake, 1972). What is known about these twenty million viewers? Census figures reveal how many households at what income levels have television sets. The University of Michigan Survey Center reports that the unemployed watch more television than the employed, the less educated more than the better educated (Robinson, 1969), and a Harris poll finds that the poor watch more than the rich (White and Averson, 1968). Sponsors know from Nielsen ratings that their viewers are primarily fulltime housewives (HO) with smaller numbers of other housebound adults such as invalids and older citizens. Among incidental viewers are preschool children. Although much has been written about prime time television programming as to its function or dysfunction in our society, the daytime dramas have been largely ignored. Perhaps social analysts have not considered their influence as models of family roles and interaction patterns worth the time and energy which would be required for valid analysis.