While the American soap opera is known primarily for its marketing value, producers, health professionals, politicians, and rebels elsewhere focus on the serials' potential for social change: African, Indian and South American serials offer information on family planning, child protection and AIDS; a Mexican telenovela parallels a government murder scandal--the program is so popular the state dare not censor it. In Russia, South American novelas are so popular that Boris Yeltsin manipulates programming to affect voters on polling day.

Here is an examination of the economic and social impact of the soap opera, with projections for the future. A chapter for each of the nine regions of the world offers demographic statistics of major countries' audiences, radio and television usage, stations available, and synopses of the most popular serials.