Soapnet was an American basic cable network owned by the Disney–ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company.

[2] When Soapnet launched on January 20, 2000, the channel aired only current ABC soap operas in the evening and early morning, so that people who were at work or school during the day could watch them at their convenience.

This was the main reason for ABC owned-and-operated station WABC-TV being pulled from Time Warner Cable's New York City system for two days in May 2000.

Peggy Bunker also hosted all events from Super Soap Weekend from Walt Disney World in Florida, including an exclusive interview with Susan Lucci.

In January 2005, the channel began airing reruns of the Fox dramas Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place; this was followed that spring with the addition of repeats of short-lived nighttime soaps The Monroes and Skin.

In July 2005, it picked up the Fox primetime soap Pasadena, including nine episodes that were not aired during the show's initial run.

Some viewers complained about what they viewed as an overabundance of prime-time programming on the channel, some of which (90210 and Melrose Place) had ended their original broadcast runs only a few years prior and had been repeated in syndication on other networks.

These fans also objected to the large number of new episodes of the ABC lineup and Days of our Lives, and repeatedly requested rebroadcasts of old daytime soaps such as Loving, The Edge of Night, Santa Barbara, and Search for Tomorrow.

In November 2007, Deborah Blackwell stepped down as general manager of the channel with then-ABC Daytime president Brian Frons assuming her duties.

In August 2008, it was revealed that Soapnet had lost the broadcast rights for both Dallas and Melrose Place; both shows left the schedule that September.

The decreasing number of active soaps, as well as the growing adoption of digital video recorders (which made it more convenient to record multiple soaps), along with cable and Internet video on demand options caching episodes online within a matter of hours, negated the further need for a linear channel devoted to the genre.

[6][7] On July 28, 2011, due to issues in reaching carriage deals for the new network, the launch of the Disney Junior channel was delayed to an unspecified date in early 2012.

[8] The Los Angeles Times reported that some television providers had been hesitant to immediately drop Soapnet, as they "didn't want to risk legions of vocal soap opera fans getting into a lather, or worse, moving to a rival service.

Some television providers, including certain Xfinity systems, immediately replaced Soapnet with Disney Junior in its channel space on launch.

A 1-hour two-week Live Well Network block was broadcast on Soapnet weeknights from 11 PM to 12 AM (ET/PT) starting on July 30, 2012 through Friday, August 10, 2012.

marathon, featuring select episodes highlighting Maurice Benard's best performances as his General Hospital character Sonny Corinthos, and the "Tad the Cad" marathon, with classic 1980s episodes of All My Children involving the Michael E. Knight character of Tad Martin's romantic trysts with Liza Colby and her mother, Marian.

These kinds of marathons were usually limited to series to which Soapnet had the rebroadcast rights (ABC's soaps, Days of our Lives and previously, The Young and the Restless).

In late 2008, the network entered into a distribution agreement with Sony Pictures Television to air a package of recent films from the studio's library and some archived content on weekend evenings, along with several 20th Century Fox films and some in ABC and ABC Family's telefilm archive aimed at the network's target audience.