This is from when the early shows had advert breaks which didnt have much in them apart from adverts for soap.

The shows for the most part in the early days were, of course, geared toward housewives, given the fact that they were home during the day. What did housewives do in those days? Laundry. Thus, the soap companies attached themselves to these programs and were usually the primary sponsors, sometimes even getting recognition in the show titles...which would have been something along the lines of "Palmolive presents All My Children" or some such.

They were daytime TV shows that were sponsered by soap companies

A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. This genre of TV and radio entertainment has existed long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is their open-ended nature. Plots run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes invariably end on some sort of cliffhanger. Evening soap operas sometimes differ from this general format and are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Additionally evening soaps and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger. Some of the larger, disaster cliffhangers that affect a large proportion of the cast sometimes serve to bring all current storylines together. Hope I Helped!

thanx 4 cleanin that up

Because most of them originally started as daytime TV and the advertising was aimed at housewives and they were predominately soap powder manufacturers who advertised and sponsered the American programmes

In olden days , the shows used to be sponsored mainly by the soap manufactures ( from the days of the radio shows). They were mainly aimed at the female audience as they were the major consumers of soap. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera

Well, they were mostly advertised by soap companies, and they are often dramatic, like operas.

The term "Soap Opera" was first coined by the american press in the 1930's to denote serialised domestic radio dramas the soap part because of their sponsorship by purveyors of domestic cleaning products and the opera part being ironic juxstaposing trivial everyday stories with great dramatic works

Andy. I was about to post this question and saw you already did. I read the first one that said something about Soap companies and I thought it was bullshit until I read all the others....Thats so weird, it's really derives from Soap sponsorship? How cool! I was thinking something like Soap Box