Coronation Street,Neighbours,Shortland Street

Abstract

The pressure on television soap operas to strike an effective balance between the often conflicting demands of localness and universality has been underlined by the genre’s post-1990 environment of aggressive competition, ratings anxiety, and continuing expectations that TV drama address export as well as domestic markets. Particularly given soap opera’s stripped, continuing nature and channel “flagship” role, new primetime soap concepts require artful trade-offs between national quirks and international conventions. This article uses examples from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand to examine the ways in which universality has been important to the primetime soap’s appeal in domestic as well as foreign markets while localness has worked to extend the genre’s diversity—particularly in the areas of concept, representation, and production approach.