Category Archives: Soap Opera
Soap Operas in Old Time Radio
It doesn’t seem long ago that homes with multiple television sets were becoming common place. Then it became rare to find a house that didn’t have some sort of high speed connection to the Internet. Now it is common to … Continue reading
Irna Phillips: Mother of the Soap Opera
The Soap Opera is considered a “Woman’s Genre”, not only because housewives are the primary audience, but because the form was invented and perfected by women in the man’s world of network broadcasting. These women included Anne Hummert, who teamed … Continue reading
Love is in the Air: More Rare Soaps… more sobbing and organ music…
That brings us to our big collection of Rare Soap Operas. Old Time Radio Catalog has scoured the collection to find the best Tear Jerkers from the era of Dish-Pan Romance. A lot of the profit that the Networks made … Continue reading
Rare Old Time Radio Soap Operas
Love is in the air over in old time radio! They’ve been hanging Paper Cupids everywhere and have been busy listening to some old Rare Soap Operas. If anything can get you in a Romantic Mood it’s the Sob-fest after … Continue reading
The Hummert Radio Factory
Half of all the advertising revenue generated by daytime programming in the 30s and 40s came from programs created by Anne and Frank Hummert. Anne’s father believed that it was a waste of money to educate a girl, so she … Continue reading
Welcome to the Sudsy Land of the Radio Soap Opera!
In the early 1930s radio was still much in its infancy as both an entertainment and advertising medium. Most of the ‘serious’ creative work was being directed towards what would become known as the “prime-time hours,” that period of the … Continue reading
Mister District Attorney debuted on the radio 4-3-1939
Today in 1939 Mr. District Attorney was heard for the first time on the radio. The radio crime-adventure serial followed the ‘champion of the people’ and was originally a 15-minute nightly program. In this broadcast, Mr. DA (Dwight Weist) goes … Continue reading
Mary Noble Backstage Wife moves from Mutual to NBC 3-30-1936
Today in 1936, the soap-opera serial Mary Noble, Backstage Wife made a move across the dial and switched networks (from the Mutual Broadcasting System to NBC.) The soap opera continued to air for the next 23 years. Please enjoy this … Continue reading