http://lovecraftismissing.com/?p=1554
The Guiding Light
Soap operas as we know them today were initially designed to sell soap. First on radio, then when they made the leap to tv, they were aimed at housewives, and thus sponsored by Proctor & Gamble, Colgate and others. The storylines have evolved superficially over the years as tastes and morals changed, but the complex love-lives, moral choices and personal dilemmas remain the foundations, even for such contemporary prime-time soaps as Desperate Housewives. Soaps are popular around the world, but they don’t necessarily translate well; most countries hahave their own sagas.
The popularity of the format can’t be denied. The Guiding Light started on radio in 1937, transitioned to television in 1952, and has run continuously since then. It will end this September, due to declining ratings, but a 72-year run is nothing to be ashamed of. As the World Turns debuted in 1956; according to Wikipedia, it aired its 13,000th episode in 2007. General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, All My Children and The Young and the Restless, while not quite as long lived, still have run for more than 30 years.
At first tv soaps followed the radio format, broadcasting 15-minute episodes five days a week. As television audiences grew, the time expanded, first to a half-hour, then to an hour. Though the story arcs were long and complex, true cliif-hanging endings were a random events.
Peyton Place was the first prime time soap, but it wasn’t until the advent of Dallas in 1978 that the genre embraced the cliff-hanger ending, and that was only after three seasons of stand alone episodes. These events were largely emphasized in the last 
episode of the season, but “Who shot J.R.?” and “Bobby’s dead! How can he be in the shower?” are two of the classic cliff-hangers of all time. Running for a total of 13 seasons, Dallas inspired a whole fleet of prime-time copycats: Knots Landing, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, etc.
The prime-time soap faded in the 1990s, but would resurface in the 21st century with Desperate Housewives, Gray’s Anatomy, and Brothers & Sisters.
Truer to the serial tradition were the chapter plays aimed at children. Fifteen-minute adventure serials like Superman and Chandu the Magician were staples of radio, but they failed to make the transition to the new medium.
Spin & Marty
The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1958) ran ten-minute chapters of original serials featuring characters like The Hardy Boys and Spin & Marty as part of its daily show.
Local television kid shows –at least the one in Oklahoma, Foreman Scotty- sometimes offered serial adventures. In addition to the usual peanut gallery, Foreman Scotty would have adventures on the ranch, told in five minute chapters. The most interesting were the ones in which his pal from outer space, 3-D Danny, sought Scotty’s help.
Later, the Banana Splits show ran featured an ongoing serial, Danger Island.
And oddly enough, several of the early cartoon shows were serialized. Crusader Rabbit , the first cartoon produced for television, was followed by Ruff & Reddy, the first Hanna-Barbera show, in 1956. The format reached its zenith in the 1960s with Rocky & Bullwinkle. ( A favorite of mine was “The
Crusader Rabbit
Search for the Kerwood Derby,” a title that is likely meaningless to anybody even ten years younger than I am; a popular variety showof that day was The Gary Moore Show, and the star’s foil was a tall, white haired gentleman named Derwood Kirby.)
In 1965, the serial returned to prime-time television with Lost in Space. The first episode, detailing the Robinson family’s mission to colonize other worlds due to overpopulation on Earth. Sabotaged by a stowawy, the ship is damaged, and the first episode ends with Prof. Robinson outside attempting a repair; his tether is undone, and as he spirals away from the ship, the picture freezes, and ‘Continued Next Week’ slides into scene.
By the second season of LIS, Batman had made its debut, setting off a camp craze that is still reverbrating throughout fandom. Though not really a serial, Batman aired twice a week, and a cliff-hanger, usually ludicrous, tied the two together. Responding to the show’s success,
Lost in space
LIS took a campy turn, emphasizing the cowardly Dr. Smith over the heroic John Robinson. By the third season, the cliff-hangers, now also ludicrous, were replaced by teasers for the following episode.
Dark Shadows
Running daily at the same time, and out-lasting both of the prime-time shows, was the unique fantasy soap, Dark Shadows.
As televisision began to discover the greater glories of reruns and syndication, serial stories posed a peculiar problem. First, as is true even today, it is difficult to draw in new viewers after the story has begun; second, viewers who miss an episode can, if the story is at all complex, be confused; more problematic is the obvious fact that a serial needs to be seen in its correct order. For many years, the mechanism for insuring that independent stations bought syndication packages didn’t air the episodes in random order was not dependable. Serial stories were discouraged, if not banned outright.
In 1979, possibly inspired by the buzz surrounding the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), NBC aired the unique Cliffhangers, an hour-long program that each week contained episodes of three different serials: Curse of Dracula, Stop Susan Williams, and The Secret Empire, the latter an homage to The Phantom Empire (1935). The series was not a success, and ended before the latter two serials reached their final chapters.
Hill Street Blues (1981) brought the elements of the soap opera to the police procedural. Multiple overlapping story arcs featuring a variety of characters gave overarching continuity to the show, but episodes didn’t end with cliff-hangers. The format was quickly adopted by other shows like St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law and is still with us today in E.R., Boston Legal , 
Battlestar Galactica and others. It is interesting to note that the long-running Law & Order, a show with stand alone episodes, tried this approach for one season before returning to its original format.
But the true serial has finally found its footing and established itself as a television mainstay, with Lost and 24 even evolving the form for the first time in decades. Each episode ends with a cliff-hanger, making each season a serial; but each season also comprises a ‘chapter’ in a larger story, and also ends in a cliff-hanger, making a sort of mega serial out of the entire series.
24
Movies, because of cost, have relied mostly on sequels, or films like the Indiana Jones series that capture the flavor and action of the old movie serials without worrying about chapter to chapter continuity. Star Wars is a serial in the European mode, feature films that tell a continuing story but don’t necessarily end on a note of high tension. Pirates of the Carribbean is a three chapter serial. I’m of two minds about Lord of the Rings, but lean toward it being a trilogy, though I would have to give some thought to defining the difference.
Most surprisingly, ‘print’ media is staging a comeback.
Stephen King, whose incredible success gives him the clout to try anything, wrote one of his most popular books, The Green Mile, in six installments in 1996. Though successful, it didn’t set off a whirlwind of serial novels. John Saul did two novels in the same format, but I can’t find any other examples.
But the internet, now that’s another story.
King once again led the way with The Plant in 2000; this year, a motion-comic version of his short story, N, was presented in 25 thirty second installments on the web. Orson Scott Card serialized Hot Sleep, one of his out-of-print novels.
But the real action is in original novels written especially for the web. Freed from the phalanx of agents and readers and editors, unchained from production costs and returns, anyone can now publish their book online. Fantasy, horror, historical, romance -it’s astonishing how many there are, each going up a chapter at a time. Most of them are pretty bad, but then, isn’t that true of most creative endeavors? Bad paintings far outnumber even mediocre ones, bad movies are almost a genre unto themselves, and bad fiction has been with us since people started to write down stories.
But there’s good stuff as well. And the fact that the chapter at a time model is dominant shows there is still life in the printed word.
As I said in an earlier article in this series, serials have always partially been a gimmick to sell you something: soap for soap operas, cereal and toys for children’s shows, various products for television shows, or just getting you to come back to the movie theatre once a week.
With the advent of VHS, though, that changed. Fans began to circulate complete serials on tape amongst themselves, leading to official (and better quality) releases, which continue today on DVD. Serial stories may be a drawback on network television, but DVD sales of serial shows like Lost and 24 are often higher than for regular series. Internet novels will undoubtedly be packaged when completed and offered for sale at prices far less than a small press hardback. The serial has finally come to be valued for itself and its peculiar qualities is demonstrating that it can build up a fan following that exceeds the prior expectations.
This concludes our survey of serial stories, but it’s safe to say the final chapter has yet to be written.
Thanks to Tom Mason and Bart Bush for their contributions.
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