Soap Opera Digest

Soap Opera Digest

February 1977 issue of Soap Opera Digest, featuring Paul Gleason of All My Children
Editorial Director Stephanie Sloane
Staff writers Carolyn Hinsey
Jennifer Lenhart
Categories Entertainment
Frequency Weekly
Total circulation
(2011)
417,429 [1]
First issue November 1975
Company Source Interlink Media
Country  United States
Language English
Website www.SoapOperaDigest.com
ISSN 0164-3584

Soap Opera Digest is a weekly magazine covering American daytime soap operas. It features onscreen and offscreen news about the series, interviews with and articles about performers, storyline summaries and analysis, and related promotional information. Founded in 1975, the magazine has historically included certain prime time soap operas in its coverage as well.

Contents

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History

Soap Opera Digest debuted in November 1975, co-founded by Angela Shapiro and Jerome Shapiro[2] and featuring actors John Aniston, Ron Tomme, Audrey Peters, Birgitta Tolksdorf, Jerry Lacy, and Tudi Wiggins of Love of Life on its first cover. Currently, the magazine has a subscription base of 500,000, as well as more than one million more issues purchased at newsstands and supermarkets each week. In the early 1990s, the magazine had up to 1.4 million subscribers.

In 1980, Network Publishing Corporation purchased the magazine from Shapiro, who went on to found Soap Opera Update. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought the magazine in 1989, and sold it to K-III Communications in 1991. K-III was renamed Primedia in 1997, and sold its magazines to Source Interlink in 2007.

Soap Opera Digest, originally published monthly, moved to biweekly issues in 1979, and started publishing weekly in 1997. In June 2011, Stephanie Sloane became the magazines Editorial Director replacing Lynn Leahey, who had been with the magazine for 27 years. Columnist Carolyn Hinsey reviews current series and soap-related events in her regular feature, "It's Only My Opinion."

The magazine holds an awards show annually to promote excellence in the genre, as decided by the fans who read the magazine. The Soap Opera Digest Awards (formerly the Soapies) have been held every year since 1977, and were last televised in 2000. The Soapy Award was originally designed by Janis Rogak, the magazine's then-Art Director.

"Soap speak" acronyms

Soap Opera Digest coined the term and popularized the use of "soap speak," in which show names are abbreviated as acronyms to save space. These abbreviations have come into more extensive use outside of the magazine with the advent of internet chat rooms and message boards.

For example, some current soap operas and their acronyms include All My Children (AMC), As the World Turns (ATWT), General Hospital (GH), and One Life to Live (OLTL). The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless are represented as B&B and Y&R, respectively. Days of our Lives is referred to as DAYS in the magazine, though the acronym DOOL is sometimes used elsewhere; General Hospital: Night Shift is similarly designated SHIFT rather than an acronym. The now-defunct series Sunset Beach (1997–1999) was known as BEACH to differentiate it from the previously-cancelled series Santa Barbara (1984–1993), which itself had been referred to as SB. Other past series with single-word titles (like Loving and Passions) are fully capitalized by not typically abbreviated. Prime time soap operas have also been attributed with acronyms and abbreviations in the magazine, including Melrose Place (MP) and Dynasty (DYN).

Circulation

Soap Opera Digest's circulation has declined over the years, reflecting both a decline in soap opera viewership and a decline in magazine circulations in general. A 40 percent decline in 2003 was due to eliminating reduced-rate subscriptions.[3] This is a list of Soap Opera Digest's average circulation per issue, per year.

  • 1988: 1.1 million[4]
  • 1998: 1,101,146[5]
  • 1999: 1,102,940[5]
  • 2000: 1,110,527[6]
  • 2001: 1,025,869[6]
  • 2002: 987,525[7]
  • 2003: 598,739[7]
  • 2004: 524,358[8]
  • 2005: 495,552[8]
  • 2006: 517,743[9]
  • 2007: 512,403[9]
  • 2008: 514,094[10]
  • 2009: 498,234[10]
  • 2010: 490,310[11]

See also

References

External links