How TikTok, micro-dramas, and distracted viewers are reshaping TV

Is TV getting worse, or are we just not paying attention?

It’s no secret that the way we consume media these days is different than it was 10 years ago. Who doesn’t like to be on their phone while they’re watching TV? Well, Hollywood has noticed your attention is split. And as a result, individuals like Kris Jenner and companies like Disney are investing in new forms of entertainment.

Enter: the vertical micro-drama. Filmed quickly and with scrolling in mind, they are short episodes, sometimes as short as 45 seconds, intended to grab the viewer with over-the-top premises.

But that isn’t the only change. The magazine n+1 reported earlier this year that Netflix executives are asking their screenwriters to “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along” — in other words, dumb down the script so that inattentive viewers can still follow along.

So, is what we’re watching getting worse? Today, Explained co-host Noel King brought that question to Puck News correspondent Julia Alexander.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

When people in the industry talk about the second screen problem, what do they mean?

If you talk to creatives, the second screen — meaning, the phone that you’re watching TikToks on while watching a movie on your big TV — is just a lack of attention that is being paid to the main movie or film on the television.

But, if you talk to executives, the question of the second screen is one of: Does the adoration for TikTok, and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts mean that people will spend less time with our streaming services that they’ll cancel, and we have to fight back for those subscribers? Before the phone came around, people would do this with magazines, and they would do it with books, and they would do it with other things. We’ve just never had as many things competing for such tiny slices of the attention pie.

There was reporting in n+1 saying that Netflix executives are telling writers to dumb down the writing in TV shows and movies. Do people who cover the industry, did they know that this was happening?