Part of it could be the connectivity of the whole thing. The viewing public has always loved a good soap, as proven by the success of the daytime genre, but in this day and age, it's considered somehow demeaning to admit that you actually sit down and watch an hour a day, five days a week, of what, quite often, amounts to cheap, repetitive storylines, and actors that aren't quite good enough for the primetime hours. But we have no problem admitting that we take one hour a week, for anywhere between twenty to twenty-six weeks of the year (after all, primetime soaps have an on-season [September to May] and an off-season [May to September], in addition to pre-emptions, hiatuses, breaks, holidays, etc.), and sit down to find out if Doug Ross is ever coming back to Carol (the tentative answer is yes -- at least for a couple episodes -- but it looks like when she leaves next year, she'll join him), if Ally and Billy will ever find their way back to each other (hopefully not), or if Amanda is doomed to wander the world without ever finding true love (I have no idea if she ever did -- anyone see the "Melrose Place" finale?).
Another could be the "recognizability" factor. Ignoring that many people just aren't willing to admit that they watch daytime soaps, the first reason many non-watchers will give is "they move too slowly". How fast can we seriously expect them to move? This is something that is beamed into our TV screens every single day of the week for a full hour. The beauty of the primetime soaps like "Dallas", "Knots Landing", and "Beverly Hills, 90210" is that we have the freedom to play with time. There is a week between each episode, and often a single episode can be representative of anything from six hours to six months. Storylines tend to move extremely quickly. There's no such thing as a primetime OJ trial. If you go on trial for murder, it usually takes about three episodes for the trial to wrap, six if you're REALLY pushing it. It's not unheard of for it to be over in a single episode. On a soap, the trial can take anywhere from 6 episodes to 60, but still only take about two weeks to run.
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