Soap Operas began on the radio in America. In the 1920's and 30's radio was just starting and stations started to spring up across America. The main audience of the radio at this time were housewife's, due to the fact that few married woman would go our and work. This meant that companies selling household products saw the opportunity to advertise on the radio. These companies needed radio stations to produce the kind of programmes that would attract a large audience of the type of women who would buy their products. They came up with the idea of drama serials that centred on the home and various domestic situations, thinking these would be ideal to show off their products. These serials were very romantic, melodramatic and were immediately successful by entertaining stay at home woman. Somebody then came up with a name to describe these shows, and they were named 'Soap Operas' due to the fact they were sponsored by 'soap' companies and ‘opera’ because, like operas, they were very dramatic. The soap and radio companies realised quickly that this type of programme was both popular and very cheap to produce. The most popular network soap-operas were ‘Ma Perkins’ and ‘One Man’s Family’.
In America after the war, radio soaps became less popular as people began to turn to the new invention, television. Once the TV became very popular, companies started to realise that it would be better to advertise on screen rather than via the radio. By the mid 1950's radio soaps were all but dead. As radio soaps were very popular, it was soon decided to transfer then to television. The same soap companies were sponsoring the programmes and the same script writers for the radio soaps were used. They were broadcast five times a week and in midday, so sticking to the successful routine the radio soaps had. They were still broadcast midday for the stay at home female audiences, as they were not yet deemed to have enough action for evening prime time TV. 
Elements from films and other dramas were added to soaps, and soon they were shown in the evening, with the aim to appeal a larger audience numbers, including the hope of gaining males fans. Instead of just being set in a domestic setting, soaps started to branch out and use outside locations for more action and excitement. The first prime time TV soap opera was 'Peyton Place' in the USA it was based upon a novel of the same name, it ran from 1964-69.
Despite the huge success for soaps in America, Britain did not take to them at all. The BBC was a public service and ran off the licence fee, meaning no advertising for outside companies, also the channel was run by a man called John Reith, who felt the TV should provide programme about culture. Britain did not get a radio soap opera until the end of the Second World War. It was called ‘The Robinsons’. ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’ followed in 1948 and then ‘The Archers’, which started in 1950 and is still going strong today – the longest running soap ever. The BBC produced it's first TV soap 'The Grove Family', but soon ITV was introduced in 1955 and started creating bigger and better soaps. ITV made it's very successful, long running soap, 'Coronation Street' in 1960, which still runs today. The BBC was never very successful with its soap operas, until 1985 when they produced 'Eastenders' which also still runs today.
In the UK alone we have many popular TV soaps including 'Coronation Street', 'Eastenders', 'Hollyoaks' and 'Emmerdale'.
As of February 2012, the longest running soap opera in the world is the British soap, 'Coronation Street' with over 50 years of being on TV.
Information from these websites:
The Museum of Broadcast communication
wikipedia
Yahoo! Voices
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