Was Compact the very first soap?
lumpbottom
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Bet that got a lot of blank looks 
There was another one I can't remember the name of. It was about a family and their neighbours, I think.
The Newcomers! I've remembered.
There was another one I can't remember the name of. It was about a family and their neighbours, I think.
The Newcomers! I've remembered.
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Maggie Fitzgibbon was in The Newcomers I believe.
Newcomers evening and Compact afternoon?
No blank look from me
Corrie is the oldest.
What was that?
Coronation Street was a drama serial, as Bill Roach says Granada tried for a long time to stop the show becoming called a soap. When EastEnders launched it too was called a drama serial.
The main reason Crossroads was knocked in the press was because it boasted about being a soap, based on the 'true soap format' based in the USA.
I'm not sure when 'soaps' that we know now started being called soaps, but I guess the late 1980s.
The first drama serial on ITV that ran daily was Sixpenny Corner, which was a daytime show that was only around 10 minutes long. However Crossroads is classed as the first 'proper' daily soap, due to the fact it filled a 30 minute ITV slot.
Sixpenny Corner was based in the fictional town of Springwood and revolved around a newlywed couple.
ITV daytime basically bombed, the show moved to evening and was axed in June 1956. It was created by Hazel Adair who had her fingers in Emergency Ward Ten (ITV's first medial drama series, and first popular serial on the network), Compact - the BBC twice weekly series based in a glamour magazine and Crossroads for ITV in 1964.
Thats ITV and the UK, not sure about the BBC or abroad.
drama serial, not soap. Soap was a USA thing, although I don't exactly know what the difference was really supposed to be other than 'drama serial' was thought of as not being so cheap.
There were actors who would do drama serials, but would not do 'soaps' but it is a fine line. Although some descriptions of soap is shows that run for four or five episodes a week.
None apart from Sixpenny Corner or Crossroads ran for more than two. Even old Emmerdale Farm wasn't a continuous drama serial as it was originally done in series and came and went from the schedules until about 1981.