Daytime soap operas colonized homemakers’ free time as advertising vehicles

Evidence

Having planted the flag in the evening hours, broadcasters would proceed to colonize other parts of the day laden with attention as yet un-reaped. Soon they would find success with daytime soap operas, targeting women at home with little to do, thanks to all the modern conveniences they had been sold. Using the basic serial template of Amos ‘n’ Andy, soap opera plots centered on family relationships among the white middle class, the target consumer. Early soap operas were thus even more natural selling tools than minstrel shows were. As one contemporary boasted, “The transition from commercial announcements to the story can be practically painless, and a great deal of actual selling can be done in the story itself.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 327

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the invention of ‘free time as a resource to be mined’ — how labor-saving conveniences created the attention surplus that became the raw material of the media economy.
• XREF: connects to: Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24; Production-process forms increasingly colonize private leisure time; Daytime soap operas embedded testimonials by trusted story characters directly into plots — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 328

Broader Connections

• Production-process forms increasingly colonize private leisure time #exemplifies (0.85)
• Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity #expands (0.82) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24