The bright hues emanating from your laptop light up your dark living room, casting highlights across your face. After ten minutes of browsing Netflix, you finally choose a new show to binge–watch over the weekend. As you cozy into the couch, your phone vibrates. A Snapchat notification pops up and as you start to reply to your friends, a two–minute distraction slowly transforms into four episodes’ worth of scrolling, replying, and messaging. But the catch? You haven’t missed anything that is happening on the show.
There has been recent evidence that Netflix has started telling their screenwriters to write for an audience that is more prone to social media scrolling and distracted watching. This can manifest itself in many ways, such as through simple plot lines or dialogue that overtly explaining what is taking place in a scene. Accompanying this change is a shift in how Netflix measures its viewership: Instead of tracking the total hours of content consumed by viewers, they are analyzing how many people are watching in total. In other words, their main priority is getting as many eyes on the screen as possible, not necessarily their temporal engagement.
This pattern of compensating for distracted viewers goes beyond this one singular platform. Typically, shows and movies that have been purchased by a streaming service differ in quality from the original content produced by the same streaming service. This is especially true in the content that targets teenagers and young adults. This is not because of the production value itself but attributed more to how content is becoming more redundant based on the preferences of past audiences. Production companies that aren't directly associated with streaming services make money in various ways, such as by putting their content on cable television, in movie theaters, or selling it to external streaming services. They can take more risks with the films and shows they produce because they can reach audiences in a variety of ways.
However, when streaming services create original shows and television shows, they have to rely on their current subscribers base to consume their content and provide the majority of their income. As a result, they create as much content as possible that also appeals to a wide range of audiences—including viewers that do not use the physical television as the primary screen that they watch during movie nights.
Of course, there are also many alternative explanations about why scripts are simplified for the viewers of streaming services. The corporate teams that hire screenwriters employ different methods for dictating their writing based on various age groups and consumer bases. Netflix can’t really control what their viewers choose to watch so they—in some ways—need to make sure that their content appeals to audiences of all ages. Although parents can control what their kids are able to see by setting up a profile on Netflix Kids, the streaming service cannot always guarantee this. This may motivate Netflix to simplify the majority of scripts to keep their customers engaged with the content, regardless of their age.
On the other hand, television channels and cable TV have a little more say in what their audiences can view based on the time they schedule shows to air. For example, shows that appeal to older audiences play later in the day, because adults are more likely to be up and watching television. As a result, shows or movies with more complicated scripts and detail oriented plot lines can be created, with consideration to the time in which they air. The same cannot be said for on–demand or streaming content, where it is made accessible to viewers of all ages at any point during the day.
Cable television shows are able to catch viewers’ attention by maintaining their attention through the tension and excitement of waiting for a new episode each week. This is something that can’t fully be accomplished by streaming services because many platforms release fully binge–able seasons of their original shows at the same time. When viewers can watch content all at once, audience engagement and excitement about the show can go away quickly. A solution to this problem for streaming services is to take a script that should be a movie and draw out the plot to create a mini–series. While this ensures that subscribers will invest more time and money into watching the entire story, it also means that a detailed storyline (which would be a movie) feels less complex because it was stretched and altered to become a TV show instead.
Audience members also tend to be more distracted now, especially with in–home streaming and watching, and that may not just be from social media. People often turn on movies and television to fill the silence during everyday tasks, such as doing laundry or washing dishes. Especially as college students, our days seem so short; it feels like time speeds up and there isn’t a lot of opportunity to sit down and enjoy an episode or two of a show. Personally, I love watching something while I am cleaning my room or exercising. It allows me to decompress while also being productive. Sometimes, however, it means I can't dedicate my full attention to the story.
Netflix is much more popular amongst specific age groups, such as 18 to 29 year olds, and their content tends to favor younger individuals. Of course, there are also movies and TV shows that are rated MA and R, but the majority of content appears to be aimed towards tweens and teens. Not only that, but our use of social media has also lowered our attention spans. The connection between these two elements may lead these platforms to create media that entertains and appeals to the majority of their viewers. Their attempts to recruit as many individuals as possible to join their service and stream their content may be at the cost of preserving the more complex plotlines that keep their viewers on the edge of their seats.
As social media becomes increasingly prevalent in our daily activities, it may have a growing connection to the wider entertainment industry. But for now, our attention span is the factor that drives ongoing changes to original content on streaming services. This poses the following questions: What will mainstream entertainment look like as we get used to consuming media in smaller and less concise pieces? And when does storytelling become less important than making money?
