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Evolution of the daytime serial

For several decades, most daytime soap operas concentrated on family and marital discord, legal drama and romance. The action rarely left interior settings, and many shows were set in fictional, medium-sized Midwestern towns.

Social issue storylines were typically verboten when soaps were starting, due to heavy network-imposed censorship at that time, but writer and producer Agnes Nixon introduced these storylines slowly but surely, first in 1962 when the matriarch of The Guiding Light, Bert Bauer, developed uterine cancer (as the actress, Charita Bauer, had been diagnosed with the same illness in real life). The storyline encouraged many women to get pap smears and the CBS mailroom in New York City received a then-record amount of fan mail wishing Bauer (both Bert and Charita) well. Nixon would go on to tell many socially relevant storylines on her soaps One Life to Live and All My Children in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Exterior shots were slowly incorporated into the series The Edge of Night and Dark Shadows. Unlike many earlier serials that were set in fictional towns, The Best of Everything and Ryan's Hope were set in a real-world location, New York City.

The first exotic location shoot was made by All My Children, to St. Croix in 1978. Many other soap operas planned lavish storylines after the success of the All My Children shoot. Soap operas Another World and Guiding Light both went to St. Croix in 1980, the former show culminating a long-running storyline between popular characters Mac, Rachel and Janice, and the latter to serve as an exotic setting for Alan Spaulding and Rita Bauer 's torrid affair. Search for Tomorrow taped for two weeks in Hong Kong in 1981. Later that year, some of the cast and crew ventured to Jamaica to tape a love consummation storyline between the characters of Garth and Kathy.

During the 1980s, perhaps as a reaction to the evening drama series that were gaining high ratings, daytime serials began to incorporate action and adventure storylines, more big-business intrigue, and an increased emphasis on youthful romance.

One of the most popular couples was Luke Spencer and Laura Webber on General Hospital. Luke and Laura helped to attract both male and female fans. Even actress Elizabeth Taylor was a fan and at her own request was given a guest role in Luke and Laura's wedding episode. Luke and Laura's popularity led to other soap producers striving to reproduce this success by attempting to create supercouples of their own.

With increasingly bizarre action storylines coming into vogue, Luke and Laura saved the world from being frozen, brought a mobster down by finding his black book in a left-handed boy statue, and helped a princess find her Aztec treasure in Mexico. Other soap operas attempted similar adventure storylines, often featuring footage shot on location – frequently in exotic locales.

During the 1990s, the mob, action and adventure stories fell out of favor with producers, due to generally declining ratings for daytime soap operas at the time. With the resultant budget cuts, soap operas were no longer able to go on expensive location shoots overseas as they were able to do in the 1980s. During that decade, soap operas increasingly focused on younger characters and social issues, such as Erica Kane 's drug addiction on All My Children, the re-emergence of Viki Lord 's dissociative identity disorder on One Life to Live, and Stuart Chandler dealing with his wife Cindy dying of AIDS on All My Children. Other social issues included cancer, rape, abortion and racism.

Several shows during the 1990s and 2000s incorporated supernatural and science fiction elements into their storylines in an attempt to boost their ratings. One of the main characters on the earlier soap opera Dark Shadows was Barnabas Collins, a vampire, and One Life to Live featured an angel named Virgil. Both shows featured characters who traveled to and from the past. In 1995, Days of our Lives featured a storyline in which fan favorite character Marlena Evans was possessed by the devil, and in 1998, Guiding Light featured a cloning storyline involving legacy character Reva Shayne.