My bedroom

[Telecolor 3007]

Tv is a cheap source of fun for the people. A family with low incomes can't go to arestaurant or a concert (maybe very rare), but can watch tv.
Maybe that's why telenovelas took off in Latin America (ha, Romania is a big consumer of Latin American and Turkish soap operas; Romanians are distant cousins of Brazilians).

[Captain Video]

Indeed, both the Romanian language and Portuguese are Latin languages with a lot of things in common.

The telenovelas might have took off because of the reasons you mentioned, but I do believe that they also did because the peoples of Spanish and Portuguese origin are very emotional people. The fact that we also have a lot of people who originated from Italy might have helped too...

Here in Brazil a lot, and I really mean a lot, of people ( myself included ) do believe that the Golden Age of telenovelas is long gone. True, they still reach good ratings, but not like in the past, like between the 1960's and early 1990's. Sure, the Internet and cable TV might have contributed to this decline, but the reason most people here say is the main cause is the fact that the telenovelas are no longer a family oriented entertainment. The plots are getting more and more scandalous, there are a lot of characters with very questionable morality doing things that the average housewife feel ashamed to see on the TV. Of course, I am talking about the telenovelas of Rede Globo, that is still the most powerful Brazilian network. I think the telenovelas from Rede Record might be a little different, because that network belong to a church. I don't know, it has been many years since I watched a novela for the last time.