CNBC reports that ratings for TV soap operas including "General Hospital" and "Days of Our Lives" have gone up for the first time in years. Part of this may be due to social media. For the first time, Nielsen has identified a link between a spike in tweets about a TV show and its ratings.

In South Korea, which has been particularly successful in exporting its soap operas to emerging markets, soaps are often filmed as close to broadcast as possible – and producers have even used social media and discussion boards to work out which characters to stick with or kill off.

"Prime time television has been very successful at utilizing some of the elements that people could always find in soaps, like long-term character development and big, dramatic plots," Harrington said.