In the light of the SABC's move towards a policy of increased local content programming, it is essential that it be ascertained why a completely alien American soap opera has a vast black audience. There is an obvious paradox between the SABC's emphasis on local content programming and the immense popularity of The Bold and the Beautiful.

This study examines whether The Bold and the Beautiful contributes in any was to the social reality of the viewer and whether or not it provides any kind of cultural reinforcement to the black urban viewer in Kwazulu-Natal, which is the geographic area in which the study was undertaken.

She chose to focus on a black urban audience firstly because blacks constitute the majority of the South African population. A second motivating factor was to ascertain why people from an afrocentric background are so taken with an American program which has an almost exclusively white cast. The objective lies therefore in establishing the ways in whcih an urban black South African audience identifies with this soap opera which is so alien in its cast and its content.

The topic was discussed from the perspectives of ethnographic audience response theory and reception analysis. Soap operas have more frequently than not been examined in the context of feminist theories for which reason Michele chose to steer away from this rubric, and to focus on the degree to which The Bold and the Beautiful is consumed across the gender divide. Little work of this nature has been done in South Africa, and no doubt Michele's dissertation will make a contribution to the existing body of work.