Question of Soap

Have listeners become surfeited with the continuous problems of Helen Trent and Our Gal Sunday? Are there too many serials on the air? Does the public want other types of daytime radio entertainment?

The Blue Network wanted answers to these questions, last week made known the results of consulting a cross section of 5,000 U.S. housewives: >The major networks devote 79% of their daytime commercial hours to soap operas. But listeners pay attention to them only 50% of the time.

> Plenty (47%) of housewives do not listen to serials at all. A lot (28%) of those who do--plus 36% of all housewives --think that the air is sudsed up with too many soap operas. Most (60%) of those who listen four or more hours a day agree.

>About half of the serial fans think most soaps interesting, 24% think a few of them are, 2% swear none is.

>Daytime listeners who leave their sets tuned to one station (19%) are outnumbered by those who listen only to specific programs (51%). Some 13% tune in nothing but news broadcasts.

> Types of daytime programs listened to by housewives: 1) news (81%); 2) serials (53%); 3) popular music (49%); 4) serious music (32%).

Q.E.D. The Blue Network seemed to have proved its point: that a good deal of soap opera time is wasted. The Blue, when it was NBC's second string network, produced one of radio's first network soap operas (Little Orphan Annie) in 1931. After it was separated from NBC, the Blue got rid of its four sponsored soaps and looked around for something to replace them. Since then it has concentrated on music, variety, comic and children's daytime programs--trying to build different kinds of shows to pull the soapy diehards away from its competitors. If the Blue's survey was correct, the network undoubtedly had a case for its soapless policy. If not, it had at least made history by publishing a survey which did not try to prove that it was the best network in existence.

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