The company spent the next three years trying face-lifts, experimenting with on-line soap operas and blurbs about cool kids, to no avail.

FORBES: Digital denim

In Manhattan, for example, cable TV viewers were able by mid-afternoon to tune back in to their favorite soap operas on WABC.

CNN: McCain speaks out on Time Warner-ABC flap

Allowing East Germans to watch American soap operas on West German television, for example, seems to have acted as a form of pacification that actually reduced people's interest in politics.

ECONOMIST: Why dictators are going digital

At first, she stayed put in remote Gaylord, observing her other widowed friends do little but watch soap operas on television, complain about aches and pains and seem to grow dottier with every passing day.

FORBES: 85-Year-Old Graduates From College -- And Finds A Job

She reads fashion magazines for make-up tips and how to keep slim with the right vegetable juices, listens to a digital music player overflowing with the latest Hong Kong Cantopop songs, and recently watched dubbed Korean soap operas on a PC with her girlfriends at her factory dorm munching snacks and drinking beer.

FORBES: China's 'Generation X'

Awareness of fashions and brands is still largely shaped by the nightly soap operas broadcast on terrestrial television and watched by an audience of tens of millions.

ECONOMIST: Brazil: Half the nation, a hundred million citizens strong | The

His broadcaster, Venevision, had been tangling so much with President Hugo Chavez that Cisneros had decided to avoid politics and focus instead on entertainment content, including hugely popular Latin American soap operas.

FORBES: What does Chavez's Death Mean For Venezuela's Billionaires?

Female inmates at an Arizona jail take turns on a stationary bike to power their TV to watch their favorite soap operas.

CNN: Pedal power is fueling green awareness

In the U.S. viewers with satellite television can watch its soap operas, game shows and reality programs like India's take on American Idol.

FORBES: Magazine Article