In our last post, we gave you a rundown of the game shows stay-at-home moms watched in the 1970s while sipping their instant coffee. Boy, things have sure changed since then. Using instant coffee today is as bad as feeding your children Cocoa Puffs for breakfast or texting while driving. It’s just something that is not socially acceptable. Anybody knows that unroasted coffee beans are the way to go.
As we were saying, our last post focused on the game shows stay-at-home moms watched in the 1970s. In addition to these fun television shows, these stay-at-home moms needed a little drama in their lives, which is why they also watched soap operas.
Again, these women kept very busy keeping the house clean, cooking meals and basically tending to their husbands and children day in and day out. But when they had that rare free moment in their hectic day, they were usually in front of the television watching one of the following soap operas.
Guiding Light
Guiding Light is a soap opera listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running drama on television in American History. It ran for an impressive 57 years. Just how much drama do you think can be packed in a television show in that time frame? Anyway, the television series totaled nearly 16,000 episodes, of which we are sure you have older relatives who have watched every single one of them. After all, your grandma was a pioneer binge-watcher.
Days of Our Lives
When you read that, you pictured that iconic hourglass sand timer in your head. And now you can’t get those words out of your head. You know what we mean, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” Now, think about that phrase as spoken by Morgan Freeman. Go ahead, it will take hours to get it out of your head.
Days of Our Lives became so popular that it was syndicated to many countries around the world.
The Edge of Night
The Edge of Night is another long-running soap opera that kept the attention of women from all walks of life in the 1970s. For most of its run, it ran as a live broadcast. Can you imagine the number of bloopers that were committed?
The series produced over 7,000 episodes which make you wonder what is was like being a soap opera writer.
Another World
Another World is a soap opera based on fictional events in the fictional town of Bay City. The show opened with the epigram, “We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds.” The creators stated this represented the difference between the world of dreams and feelings we desire the events of the world we live in. How profound.
General Hospital
General Hospital is a daytime television medical drama that is set in, you guessed it, a hospital. For the majority of the 1970s, most of the storylines revolved around the Spencers and the Quartermaines. The show peaked in the early 1980s with the wedding of Luke and Laura. For all of those who have no idea who that couple was, feel free to check Wikipedia.