“Don't Cry because it's Over, Smile because it Was:” American Soap Operas and Convergence Culture

Abstract

This essay focuses on the struggles of the soap opera, a foundational television genre, as emblematic of the American television industry's struggles to maintain its once dominant role in media culture in the wake of technological and social changes associated with convergence culture. The soap opera has played a central role in defining the television industry, yet the 2012 cancelations of long-running broadcast soaps All My Children and One Life to Live as well as the beleaguered attempt to transplant these soaps into an online-only platform seems to suggest the industry has labeled soaps as outdated casualties of convergence that must be sacrificed in order to align television with its “new” future. However, such a view ignores the role the soap opera has played throughout the social and technological transitions that have shaped television culture. By looking closely at industry discourses surrounding the American soap opera from its inception to the contemporary moment of crisis, this essay advocates for a historical approach to convergence. That is, rather than seeing convergence as a property of the contemporary digital age, a move evident in industry discourses on television culture, this essay explores the importance of understanding how “new” media forms collide with, rather than replace, the “old” within convergence culture.