The Edge Of Night Visual Analysis

The daytime TV serial is a special breed of entertinament. It has generally been watched by millions of people over the years, yet it has always been considered the laughing stock of TV in general.Yet many people still watch daytime TV and in recent years it has started to gain a bit more respect by critics and journalists. One of the greatest highlights of the daytime TV serial is the many different forms of paratexts that surrounds each and every show. While scouring the internet for an example of a paratext, I found a rather fascinating one for the series The Edge of Night (1956-1984). We will be exploring this paratext for a classic serial, and eventually find out how the paratext at hand would help promote the show for general audiences at the time. This specific paratext comes in the form of an advertisement that could have been found in a newspaper or magazine. The biggest point of this advertisement is to promote the fact that The Edge of Night is moving to ABC. This statement is highlighted by big font and an exclamation mark to signify to people that this is a very big deal. The statement is short, sweet and to the point, but more importantly it is very hard to miss, since it’s smack dab in the middle of the advertisement. This is actually
Obviously this is just an extension of the previously mentioned promotion, but now we know what channel to tune in to and when we should be switching on our TV sets to check out the show. Beneath this information is a vitle piece of info that almost comes off as a mere footnote, telling us that the show will begin airing on Wednesday, 12/3. This bottom quarter of the advertisement is a lot of information that promotes the important details on when and where to view this show, it seems obvious, but in an age without the internet this is a very important part of the