A telenovela (/ˌtɛlənoʊˈvɛlə/ or /ˌtɛlənəˈvɛlə/; Spanish: [telenoˈβela], European Portuguese: [ˌtɛɫɛnuˈvɛɫɐ]), Brazilian Portuguese: [ˌtɛlenoˈvɛla]) is a type of limited-run serial drama originally produced in Latin America that has become popular in European, Asian, and other global television networks. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão (Spanish and Portuguese words for television), and novela, a Spanish and Portuguese word for "novel". There are similar genres to the telenovela that use the novela format, but go by varying names including teleserye (Philippines), téléroman (Canada, specifically Quebec), or simply dramas (Asia and the rest of the Arab World). Telenovelas differ from soap operas in that they rarely continue for more than a year. This makes them shorter than soap operas, but still much longer than most other serials. In Spain, they are also called culebrones ("long snakes") because of the convoluted plots. Episodes of telenovelas usually last between 30 and 45 minutes, and rarely more than an hour, except for final episodes. The telenovela combines drama with the 19th-century feuilleton, and naturally evolved from the Latin American radionovela, according to Blanca de Lizaur. The medium has been used frequently by authorities in various countries to transmit sociocultural messages by incorporating them into storylines, which has decreased their credibility and audiences in the long run. By the 1970s and 1980s Mexico became a world pioneer in using telenovelas to shape behavior, particularly successfully in introducing the idea of family planning. Mexico and Brazil later, in the 1990s, played a key role in the international export of telenovelas, thus the so-called 'Telenovela Craze' that spread in many regions in the world until today. Over time telenovelas evolved in the structure of their plots and in the themes that they address. Couples who kiss each other in the first minutes of the first episode sometimes stay together for many episodes before the scriptwriter splits them up. Moreover, previously taboo themes such as urban violence, racism, and homosexuality were later incorporated into telenovelas. Since the 2000s, Latin America and Asia altogether have emerged as the biggest producers of telenovelas, which remains one of the most common forms of popular entertainment in the world. Many telenovelas share some stylistic and, to a certain extent, thematic similarities to the soap opera, a format popular in the English-speaking world; because of these similarities, the American colloquialism Spanish soap opera has come to describe the telenovela format (this format has been attempted in the United States but, generally, to much less success than in Latin America). However, telenovelas differ from soap operas primarily in their length; soap operas tend to have indefinite and continuing runs (with such programs only ending via cancellation by their network because of weak viewership) with intertwined storylines that can last in the most successful cases for decades, while telenovelas tell one self-contained story, typically within the span of a year or less. The end result is that the telenovela requires a faster-paced, more concise style of melodrama compared to the soap opera.

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