When did you first learn of other soaps?

[DRW50]

A lot of us just started out watching one channel, or one soap. I mostly knew the CBS soaps, although I also knew about Santa Barbara, as someone I knew watched that sometimes. I saw other soaps during the Daytime Emmys but generally they were strangers to me.

When I started reading soap magazines, in the mid-90s, I really started to learn more about other soaps, and I also started watching ABC around that time.

The first time I ever realized there were so many old soaps was when I went to WOST. I had dialup, so I just sat and waited and waited to get to watch/listen to the soap themes (I mostly remember doing that with Ryan's Hope and with The Doctors).

Something else which really opened my eyes was when Soap Opera Weekly did this wonderful countdown of the greatest 110 or 115 soap moments, which had photos, memories, and all kinds of details on soaps of the past, like Search for Tomorrow.

I guess the last step was when I got Chris Schemering's Soap Opera Encyclopedia, which listed every soap, syndicated and network, since the late 40's. Wonderful resource and a real eye-opener.

I first started learning about foreign soaps when PBS ran Eastenders, although it wasn't until I started looking more on the Internet that I realized there were so many other shows.

[beebs]

For me, I always knew about DAYS and AW and SB, those were my gran's shows when I was a little kid, and I always remembered and loved DAYS and AW. I started learning about other soaps when gram got bored of DAYS in the early 90s and switched to AMC, so I learned a lot about that show. She also sometimes flipped to Loving, but that was intermittent and the thing I remember most about Loving is the New Age and the Jeffrey Osbourne openings. When I got a bit older, mom started taping GL and ATWT daily, and because Y&R was on during my lunch break, I got to know that show too.

That'd be when I grew up a bit, and DAYS' John/Kristen/Marlena storyline was hot, and I got sucked into that so much that I tuned back into DAYS, but because our local station had so many soaps on in the afternoon, I managed to get sucked into B&B and GH in the process, as well as DAYS, AW, and Y&R.

Gram had told me about The Doctors (primarily that she missed it a great deal), and I think she alluded to SFT when Mary Stuart moved to GL, but that's about all. It took me getting into soaps heavily again around 2008 for me to really dig into the old stuff.

Anyway, as for the others, I got bored with DAYS and moved exclusively over to ABC soaps around 1998, so I got back into AMC while still deep into GH, and learned about AW and watched PC from the debut. So I've been really saturated with knowledge for a long time. Born and raised soap viewer, I suppose you could say.

[cityfan01]

I had been watching the ABC shows since I was born (1987), but I was at home over Christmas break when Sunset Beach premiered, and that is what made me discover NBC. I got into SuBe immediately and started watching DAYS.

[yr9190]

The first soaps i knew about at a young age were the CBS soaps, but my mom only watched Y&R/B&B. I watched with her, but really was too young to know what was going on, and wasn't actually into soaps yet. The first soap i really got into was Passions, which at the time really didn't seem like a soap with Tabitha and Timmy and the other supernatural stuff, i also started watching Days because of that, and later on after Passions was cancelled from NBC I got into Y&R/B&B by watching old clips and looking up old storylines on the internet. I have watched the other shows along the way but not as much.

[Khan]

Aside from LOVING, which came on everyday at 10:30 am in our area, and EDGE OF NIGHT, which came on after GH, Mama Khan would flip often between soaps (AMC and Y&R, CAPITOL -- and later, B&B -- and RYAN'S HOPE, ATWT and OLTL, even GL and GH occasionally), so that's how and what I would watch. I think the only soaps that I discovered and watched on my own were SEARCH FOR TOMORROW (by accident, because I was flipping through the channels one day and saw it on an independent station), SANTA BARBARA (through one awards show or another), and DAYS (because I'd come home from school at 3:30 and "Oprah" was the last thing I wanted to watch).

[Eric83]

When I was a kid I thought Y&R, BB, ATWT, GL, AMC, OLTL, GH, DAYS and a few others were the only soaps that ever existed. I didn't even know they were in danger of extinction until I started going on soap boards in 2008. That's also when I started learning about past soaps and what not. Only watched CBS soaps though, knew about the others through family members.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

I grew up watching the CBS soaps and occasionally Another World until it was canceled when I was 12.

I knew of the ABC ones. But, I never watched them until...

One night I was up depressed after a bad break-up and it was around 3am. I was flipping stations and landed on SoapNet where they were showing General Hospital. This was in September of 2007. I got sucked into it from the first episode I saw. ATWT was getting boring to me too. So, I started watching OLTL at 2pm instead so I wouldn't have to flip channels at 3pm. I found out I really really liked it too. The Paris TX storyline was going on with Marcie being on the run. It was full of drama. Which, ATWT was lacking at that time. So, I stuck with it.

Finally. I started watching AMC when I turned up the sound at 1PM instead of playing music. I got hooked when Tad/Adam were fighting over something and they were both making hilarious quips. Watching MEK and DC on the screen had me HOOKED!

[JackPeyton]

My great grandma watch NBC, grandma watched ABC, and Mom watched CBS so i always knew about all of them, i guess. But i spent the most time with GG so i was into Days. Around 1998 I tuned into GH one day and was hooked, and in like 1999 happened to watch Y&R when it was on late one night and became hooked.

[DAYSjunkie1987]

Both my Mother and Grandmother (god rest her soul) watched CBS soaps, so that's all I really knew about at a young age until I first read an issue of SOD around '92 or so. That's when I learned that NBC (vaguely knew about those already, though) and ABC had soaps, too. I didn't branch out from CBS on my own until Christmas Break of '96 when I was flipping channels and decided to check out DAYS. It was Kristen that sucked me in immediately. I also checked out the on-the-way-out The City and the rest of the ABC soaps, as well as AW (which I later got into through Soapnet reruns). The only one that held my interest was DAYS. Eventually I would start watching PC around '00 (though I watched the premiere, it didn't really hold my interest), and the rest of the ABC soaps starting in '04.

[Gray Bunny]

My earliest recollections of soaps were in the late 80's during the summertime when I'd be visiting my grandma during the week and she'd be watching As the World Turns at 1pm (I remember the spinning globe, blue light beams, Emma, and Barbara) and General Hospital at 2pm (I only remember the ambulance/hospital opening).

My 2nd peek at soaps was around '93 or '94 when Days of Our Lives caught my eye twice for T-NBC reasons: I recognized Bryan Dattilo because he was on an episode of California Dreams. On the DAYS episode I saw, he was nekkid and wrapped in a towel, making out with a girl on the grass or something. The other time DAYS caught my eye (or maybe it was the same episode?) was when I saw Lark Voorhies (ex-Wendy) of Saved by the Bell fame and watched it for a bit. I think she was talking to someone in the Horton house.

I didn't really start "learning" about soaps until after the summer of 1995 when I got hooked on DAYS and mom bought a Soap Opera Digest in September with Bo/Hope/Billie "Goodbye Billie!"

[jcar03]

My mom watched the NBC soaps, I mostly just watched DAYS until the mid-to-late 90's when I got older and wasn't hanging outside as much so I started watching Another World and Sunset Beach, I also remember my mom tuning into Y&R for awhile. She also tried to watch GH when Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans joined but she couldn't get into it. My Grandma who baby-sat us watched the CBS soaps.

[applcin]

When I was little, I knew my mother watched the NBC soaps--The Doctors, DOOL, Somerset & Another World--but I was too young to be more than vaguely aware of them. When I was a kid starting to watch soaps I somehow ended up watching ABC and All My Children is the first one I remember--Chuck & Donna were the first major couple/storyline I remember. Then I watched the whole ABC lineup and didn't add anything until the mid-80s. When EON ended and Larkin Malloy went to GL, I followed him there and that's how my GL viewing began. A couple of years later I thought I'd check out DOOL and AW and watched those...DOOL only for about 6-7 years during the late 80s/early 90s. When I started to watch AW, I had a special nostalgic fondness for Douglass Watson's voice since I could remember it from when I was little. I couldn't tell you anything about his previous storylines but his voice was just so familiar to me.

One time in the late 80s I flipped around to Telemundo and came across a telenovella called "Estrellita Mia" and it seemed interesting, even if I could only understand some of it (me being Italian, not Spanish) but I got caught up in the story of this girl having an affair with a man who had a bitchy, handicapped wife. Once in a while I think it would be interesting to try to get into another telenovella or maybe a drama on one of the Asian channels (with subtitles, lol) but I barely have enough time keeping up with other shows (not soaps) I record.

[tune_in_tomorrow]

After watching "Search for Tomorrow" briefly in the mid 70s during the summer when I was 7-8 years old, I didn't watch any soaps until Labor Day off from school in 1983 and the aftermath of Renee DiMera's murder on DAYS. Thinking a good murder mystery would be solved shortly thereafter, I started recorded it on the family VCR. Some of "Another World" was on a tape in early-mid '84 so I got interested in that. When I left for college in '85 -- when there wasn't cable in the dorms or enough money for a VCR -- you watched whatever was on in the lounges across campus. During the day, that was the ABC soaps so I learned about them and watched for a couple of years. A co-worker mentioned "As the World Turns" so I watched that for a time in the late '80s, alternating between the NBC and ABC soaps, before pretty much leaving them all behind by the time I entered the "real world" after college.

[dsvd79]

I don't think I was ever "learned" of soaps. They were always there. My mom and her mom watched the CBS Lineup. And so I watched it, and never thought of anything different. What is weird now, is that there are only 2 soaps left on CBS.

[Mr. Vixen]

GH from birth.

AMC and OLTL I watched throughout my childhood.

Y&R/B&B I learned about through my mom when I was a teen.

DAYs I stumbled upon on my own at various times.

ATWT/GL i watched periodically throughout these years just out of curiosity.

Another World/TheCity/Loving - Stumbled upon while trying to kill time at some point.