The Ultimate Soap Opera Digest - American History Information Guide and Reference

The February 1977 issue of Soap Opera Digest. Featured is Paul Gleason of All My Children.

The February 3, 2004 issue of Soap Opera Digest. Featured is from .

The February 3, 2004 issue of Soap Opera Digest. Featured is Deidre Hall from Days of our Lives.

Soap Opera Digest is a magazine, chronicling the stories airing on American soap operas and the off-screen lives of the actors appearing on them. The magazine first debuted in 1975 (the first cover story was John Aniston, who was on Love of Life at the time). Currently, the magazine boasts a subscription base of 500,000, as well as more than a million more issues purchased at newsstands and supermarkets each week. In the early 1990s, the magazine had up to 1.4+ million subscribers.

The magazine, originally published monthly, moved to biweekly issues in 1979, and started publishing weekly in 1997. The current editor-in-chief is Lynn Leahey .

The magazine holds an awards show annually to promote excellence in the genre, as decided by the fans who read the magazine. The Soap Opera Digest Awards (formerly the Soapies) has been held every year since 1977.

This magazine coined "soap speak," in which show names are abbreviated to save space. Nowadays, with the advent of chat rooms and message boards, these shortened names for the shows have become very popular, and a use has been made of them outside of the magazine.