After being written off by some, the traditional soap opera is enjoying a renaissance as streaming platforms search for programming that will increase engagement, decrease churn and sit well with the advertisers they are now courting.  

There was a time around four or five years ago when the soap opera looked like it might be going the way of the dodo.

The first wave of global streaming services, spearheaded by Netflix and Amazon, were using big-budget, shorter-order, star-studded original dramas to attract subscribers, and the second wave of platforms (HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+) seemed intent on following a similar path.

Against that backdrop, soap operas were often an afterthought within the English-language streaming landscape, dismissed by many as programming that would soon be consigned to the annals of history as viewers cut the cord and migrated to streaming’s buffet of prestige content.

But the soap has proven to be more resilient than many gave it credit for, and as the market has evolved to focus on engagement, subscriber retention and defence against churn, the enduring appeal of this storytelling form has started to shine through.

It is true that streaming is still focused primarily on the ‘next’ hit, typified by the fact few shows make it beyond a third season and many are one and done. But the programming mix at all streaming platforms is changing, with soap operas – and, to a degree, scripted programming that incorporates more soapy elements – becoming increasingly prevalent on SVoD and AVoD platforms.

 
Perhaps the best example of soaps’ brush with near-extinction is Neighbours, the long-running Australian show following the inhabitants of Ramsay Street. After being cancelled last year when it was dropped by Paramount-owned UK terrestrial Channel 5, Amazon’s AVoD platform Freevee revived the series by signing a deal with the show’s producer and distributor Fremantle.

Under the multi-faceted agreement, the new iteration of Neighbours will air exclusively on Freevee in the US and UK, and on Prime Video in Canada, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, the show will premiere on Paramount-owned terrestrial network Network 10 before moving to Prime Video seven days later.

“Soap opera is one of those categories where it’s not that people don’t want to watch them anymore, it’s that they want to watch them on their own time, or within their own schedule,” says Lauren Anderson, head of AVoD original content and unscripted programming at Amazon Studios.

“We think that, once again, we’ll be able to show that people are still excited to watch soap operas, but let’s give them a new way to do that.”

Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison says soap operas are a “perfect fit” for streamers as the market evolves and platforms look to bolster engagement and reduce churn.

“Soap operas like Neighbours provide a wonderful continuity for viewers. We are making hundreds of episodes per season, as opposed to an eight- or 10-part drama. We are a year-round proposition and we are always dropping new episodes,” he says.

“We offer our audience fast-paced, dynamic storytelling and warm, relatable characters that [viewers] want to spend their time with. Everything comes back to story and characters.”

One interesting facet of Neighbours’ journey is that the show went from being cancelled to now, through the Amazon revival, having the broadest distribution footprint it has ever had.

With that in mind, the team behind the show is looking to catch the attention of North American audiences. One way it has done this is by casting Anglo-American actress Mischa Barton, who is perhaps best known for her role in US drama The OC, which ran for four seasons on Fox from 2003 to 2007.

“We want our established audience base to tune back in and feel everything they felt when they last watched the show,” says Herbison. “However, we also want to give our new viewers an entry point to join the residents of Ramsay Street. Mischa’s character is one of those entry points.”

Freevee also acquired the rights to thousands of older episodes, giving new viewers a gateway to understanding the show’s past – and potentially creating avenues to bring back characters of yesteryear.

“I love the idea that, in the future, a character might return from the past. If the viewer is interested, they can go back to the old episodes and see what the same character got up to way back when. It will all be there at the click of a button.”

The advent of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) is also contributing meaningfully to the soap opera renaissance.

Earlier this year, UK soap opera Brookside, which ran for 21 years from 1982 to 2003 on Channel 4, was picked up by streamer STV Player, the VoD service operated by Scottish broadcast channel STV, through a deal with All3Media and creator Phil Redmond’s Lime Pictures.

STV Player opted for a staggered release schedule, dropping the first 10 episodes on February 1, followed by five episodes weekly.

The strategy paid off instantly, with STV Player posting its best-ever month for VoD streaming in March, with 11.6 million streams across the UK. That was up 16% from its previous monthly record, set in January 2021 during the height of the Omicron wave of Covid-19.

In early April, the platform said it had signed up 100,000 new users since announcing the soap’s return on January 25, and that it had helped it “further establish itself as a standalone, UK-wide streaming service.”

All3Media International’s executive VP of strategic development Gary Woolf says the migration of classic soaps to streaming is driving new audiences to those platforms. “It feels like what we’re seeing with Brookside in the UK is that soaps are fulfilling a role and therefore driving value in AVoD,” he says.

Despite the fact Brookside launched 40 years ago, viewers have commented that many of the social issues portrayed in the show are still relevant today, notes Woolf.

“Essentially, there’s a huge nostalgia value in bringing this back. Successful soaps do tend to have large, loyal audiences – these shows play a real part in people’s lives, and revisiting those moments has a real value to those audiences.”

However, it is not simply a case of dropping all episodes of an old soap on a streaming platform at once. Dropping five episodes a week has encouraged viewers to return to the platform and, from a marketing perspective, “it gives us a time horizon so that we can plan campaigns around story arcs,” says Woolf.

There are soap-driven shifts taking place in the Latin American and US markets too.

In Latin America, where the telenovela – the local form of soap opera – has long been the dominant form of screen-based storytelling, both Netflix and soon-to-rebrand streaming service Max are getting in on the action, with Netflix last month ordering its first ever local original telenovela in Brazil and Max commissioning its first original soap in the Latin America region.

Meanwhile, Fred Black, principal analyst at UK-based research company Ampere Analysis, points to the decision to move US soap opera Days of Our Lives from broadcaster NBC, where it had aired for 57 years, to streamer Peacock as evidence of the continuing shift.

“It’s notable that Freevee is also targeting content which resembles the usual fare of US syndication – the likes of Judy Justice and spin-off Tribunal Justice. This content can help streaming services, both SVoD and AVoD, by bringing consumers back to the service consistently, day after day, and hopefully from there provide a jumping-off point to find other content in the library,” he says.

Another strategic benefit provided by soaps is that they attract older audiences that have “typically been more reluctant to move from linear to streaming,” says Black.

“As streamers reach saturation point with younger audiences in established markets, older audiences provide room for subscriber growth. In fact, for SVoD services at least, they may even make more sense. At a time of belt-tightening, older audiences are more likely to have the disposable income to maintain their SVoD subscriptions.”

There are, of course, financial factors at play, notes Black. “Many streaming services are tightening the purse strings, but the volume of original content on offer remains crucial to the audience’s perception of value. Low-cost, high-volume content is therefore an obvious choice.”

In Turkey, there are also interesting developments afoot in the television marketplace, says Inci Gulen, CEO of Istanbul-based prodco Stellar Yapim and producer of Turkish hits like Elif, as daily dramas become an increasingly prevalent form of programming.

This time a year ago, there were three daily dramas on air, while today there are eight, with nearly a dozen more currently in production, she says. But the reason for the uptick is somewhat surprising.

“The explosion in daily dramas isn’t due to Turkish demand – it is the international market that is driving growth. Turkish daily dramas perform far better outside Turkey than they do here [in Turkey], and they succeed for many of the same reasons as our primetime dramas: high production values, beautiful actors and emotional impact. Like all Turkish dramas, dailies tend to revolve around romance, family and suspense.”

Leaning into melodrama, Gulen says daily dramas employ a “simple formula” but one that “overachieves” in the age of premium television. There is something to be said for the relative simplicity of this form of storytelling, she argues.

“Daily dramas are the ultimate counter-programming to fast-paced, complex, morally ambiguous TV series,” she says. “Dailies succeed because they let viewers escape to a simpler, slower-paced world, where the heroes are good, the bad guys are plain to see and modern problems give way to universal stories.”

Far from being washed away by all the new premium shortform drama available these days, it looks like soap, in its various forms, is here to stay.

After being written off by some, the traditional soap opera is enjoying a renaissance as streaming platforms search for programming that will increase engagement, decrease churn and sit well with the advertisers they are now courting.  

There was a time around four or five years ago when the soap opera looked like it might be going the way of the dodo.

The first wave of global streaming services, spearheaded by Netflix and Amazon, were using big-budget, shorter-order, star-studded original dramas to attract subscribers, and the second wave of platforms (HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+) seemed intent on following a similar path.

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