Post by P&B Communication, KE

October 20th, 1930, Painted Dreams premiered on WGN Radio Station. It was a fictional story of an ordinary family woman, Mother Moynihan, a widowed Irish-Catholic matriarch navigating life in Chicago with her grown children. Written by Irna Phillips, a schoolteacher who worked part time at the radio, Painted Dreams introduced a new genre of brand visibility that lived on for decades after it was born. The show was a 15 minute daytime drama series running 6 times a week on radio. It is what we now call Soap Opera, a name that has a rather interesting origin. When Irna wrote the drama series, it was purely for entertaining audiences, mostly housewives going about their homesteading business in their homes. The drama was not sponsored at first. For six days a week, Painted Dreams kept radio listeners hooked for the first year without sponsorships. Now, let’s delve a bit into the context around which the show was created. Radio was booming and major corporations loved advertising to radio listeners. But these early adverts were disruptive. They distracted listeners from radio entertainment. Brand visibility, then felt like a nuisance or an unwanted break from something enjoyable. And so 15 minutes of an entertaining drama series that kept women hooked was a welcome experience…The end of each episode, a cliff hanger that kept them coming back for more, day after day. Predictably, brands made a discovery.