Word: soaping
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...broadcasts it to more than 1.2 million subscribers in 41 African nations. Though the majority of M-Net's subscribers are in South Africa, as only a tiny percentage of Africans own television sets, millions gather in clubs and restaurants across the continent to watch the real-life daily soap opera unfold. Television has succeeded where politics failed in creating a new Pan-Africanism, bringing together Africans not only on the screen, but also in the local dive. Proponents praise the program for bridging cultural gaps and eroding misconceptions that Africans of different nationalities hold of one another...
There's no surer sign of a fading soap opera than a lurid plot twist. Unlike their glossy American counterparts, British soaps like the long-running, top-rated EastEnders traditionally aim for stolid social realism, depicting ordinary folk pursuing humdrum lives. Now, though, dwindling audiences are spurring EastEnders' producers to unleash implausible killers and gothic disasters on their workaday protagonists. In a recent plotline, a character was taken hostage by his deranged stepson and saw his wife shot as she came to his rescue...
...past few months, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has itself resembled a superannuated soap, with the long-term future of the 85-year-old institution called into question as it lurches from embarrassing revelations about editorial lapses to high-level resignations and job cuts. Management has apologized for such breaches of trust as falsifying the results of a public vote held to name a cat on the children's show Blue Peter (producers rejected the winning entry, Cookie, in favor of Socks) and showing a trailer for the documentary A Year with the Queen with scenes shown out of sequence...
...itself. In 1897, after the state condemned the town to make way for a reservoir to serve the booming metropolis to the south, residents picked up their homes and moved a mile away. Literally. They loaded more than 55 houses and stores onto log rails greased with laundry soap and used horses to pull the buildings to a new town site. The Move, which is commemorated at the Katonah library with a diorama, took six months and is still talked about with pride. "There's this notion that we're not like everyplace else," says Deirdre Courtney-Batson, a historian...
...third season, this self-described soap opera has turned into the last act of Hamlet, with corpses littering the stage. After the deaths of several supporting meerkats, Flower--the show's matriarch and protagonist, a furry female Tony Soprano--died of a snakebite defending her pups. A few weeks later, Flower's long-suffering daughter Mozart--a fan favorite who was abandoned by her mother and lost several pups--was killed off camera by an unknown predator. Grief-stricken fans held online vigils, created Diana-style tributes, even suggested the deaths were faked. (Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance--they...