A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. Programs described as soap operas have existed as an entertainment long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers as the show's sponsors. These early radio serials were broadcast in weekday daytime slots when mostly housewives would be available to listen; thus the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience. Bowles, p. 118

The term soap opera has at times been generally applied to any romantic serial, but is also used to describe the more naturalistic, unglamorous evening, prime-time drama serials of the UK such as Coronation Street. Bowles, p. 119 What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a program a soap opera is that it, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". Bowles, p. 121 Soap opera stories 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 typically 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 soap operas and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger.

The Young and the Restless (commonly abbreviated as Y&R) is a popular American television soap opera, first broadcast on CBS Daytime on March 26 1973. Y&R was created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, who set their show in a fictional version of Genoa City, Wisconsin, a town near their annual vacation home in Lake Geneva.

When it debuted, the show originally focused on the personal and professional lives of two core families in Genoa City: the wealthy Brookses and the poor Fosters. After a series of recasts and departures in the early 1980s, most of the original characters were written out and the show shifted to the Abbotts, the Newmans, and the Williams. One basic plot that has run throughout almost all of the show's history is the rivalry between Jill Foster Abbott and Katherine Chancellor.

The series was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. It was expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4 1980. Y&R is currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television. As of 2007, it has appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen Ratings in that category for more than 1000 weeks since 1988.

Y&R has won seven Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series; only General Hospital has won more times (nine).

Set in Genoa City, Wisconsin, The Young And The Restless is the thirty-year-old soap that centres on the saga between two wealthy families (the Newmans and the Abbotts) in the cosmetics industry. Head of the Newman clan is Victor Newman, the arrogant, cavorting billionaire and his wife Nikki; and running the Abbott show is Jack Abbott, the irresponsible, playboy CEO and his sister Ashley. Most of the show is centred on the competition between the two companies: Victor's Newman Enterprises and the Abbotts' Jabot. Written by Josh