Too young, perhaps, to remember life before soap operas, ABS-CBN celebrates 60 years of the genre.
Six decades years ago, radio first introduced the soap opera into the lives of listeners, and created a monster, of sorts. Radio aired the first dramas to remove airplay from music and news. With commercial support coming from soap manufacturers, the term soap opera came to be.
From Manila Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) airing “Gulong ng Palad” (figuratively, Wheel of Life/Fate) in 1949 to a medium shift initiated by ABS-CBN, television gathered a wider audience for the drama.
ABS-CBN aired “Hiwaga sa Bahay na Bato” (The Stone House Mystery) in 1963, multiplying fan-base and creating die-hards herding into living rooms to catch the latest story that mirrored everyday life and character.
This followed with dozens of television dramas that have strengthened the genre’s stronghold on programming, top-billing and marketing. ABS-CBN is credited for coining the terms ‘teleserye,’ ‘fantaserye,’ ‘action-serye,’ ‘sineserye’ and ‘Asianovela’. (Serye means series in Pilipino.)
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Pinoy Soap Opera. ABS-CBN hails the legacy soap operas have carved in the Filipino social psyche, more than the milestone the genre has engendered in the entertainment industry.
