Writes Karl Taro Greenfeld, "a scriptwriter for television and a novelist," in "Short Videos Are Killing Hollywood. A Merger Won’t Save It" (NYT).
Why would a composer of symphonies know how to write a 2-minute pop song? People love the visual equivalent of a pop song and, as with pop songs, they'll listen to a lot of them in a row. It's not as though they don't want to spend the time with the material they like. They just like snazzy little works of art that begin and end quickly.
But Greenfeld takes the position that the "attention span is shattered," even if people are spending hours looking at short video. Something is going wrong if people won't lock in for a 1-hour episode of TV drama. Weren't we wonderful back in the old days when we'd sit there, inert, staring at an episode of "Bonanza" or "ER" or "Breaking Bad"?
Greenfeld — a writer of hourlong dramas — has preconceptions about preconceptions: "A surprising number of consumers would rather be fed a steady drip of content confirming their own preconceived notions and biases than take a chance and spend several hours that could, potentially, make us feel differently about the world than when we started."
But Greenfeld takes the position that the "attention span is shattered," even if people are spending hours looking at short video. Something is going wrong if people won't lock in for a 1-hour episode of TV drama. Weren't we wonderful back in the old days when we'd sit there, inert, staring at an episode of "Bonanza" or "ER" or "Breaking Bad"?
Greenfeld — a writer of hourlong dramas — has preconceptions about preconceptions: "A surprising number of consumers would rather be fed a steady drip of content confirming their own preconceived notions and biases than take a chance and spend several hours that could, potentially, make us feel differently about the world than when we started."
It's a nice idea — art changing us — but didn't 2-minute pop songs change us?
(I'm saying this as a writer of blog posts.)
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67 కామెంట్లు:
More short videos. Absolutely no M&A. Got it. Thanks Karl!
"A surprising number of consumers would rather be fed a steady drip of content confirming their own preconceived notions and biases than take a chance and spend several hours that could, potentially, make us feel differently about the world than when we started."
She’s got me pegged.
The truly expensive content came out during the MGM and Network TV era -- when they made Ben Hur and Cleopatra on film not digital, when police chases involved jumping a car over a fruit stand or the General Lee flying. On film not digital. Every. Single. Week.
New stuff has been competing with the back catalog since Marvel comics dominated Hollywood 10+ years ago. The 1950s version was good, the 1960 musical remakes were good in their own silly ways, the 1970s to 2000s rethinkings were sometimes good (e.g., newer Battlestar Galactica). Recent content is a desperate rehash and no better than what came before.
On top of that, attention spans have shortened.
Is this the equivalent of Old Man Shakes Fist at Sky?
Sorry, at Clouds.
What is the world coming to when there are so few people able to appreciate my genius?!
Know what else is killing Hollywood? Telling half the country you hate their guts.
I probably haven't watched TV for more than 10 years other than if my wife has it on and I'm in the living room. But even then I am usually workiing on my laptop, reading a kindle or surfing the web.
I will, sometimes, watch US TV shows on Prime or Netflix (my schedule, no ads) but only a few of those.
I watch a lot of series. Which I guess are mostly TV shows but with an arc instead of each show being stand alone. I don't even like watching movies much. Seems like they are over before they even start.
On the other hand I love watching Tik-Tok and X short videos. All sorts of wierd subjects like catfishing, congressional clips, auto repair and stuff I'd never even think of.
The nice thing about these short form videos is that there is no committment. Jump in, watch for a couple minute or a couple hours then jump out whenever.
If they stopped making movies and network, I might not even notice except it would be sure to be discussed here.
John Henry
To me, watching long TV shows or movies was largely a habit. And I've got out of that habit. I'll admit that youtube etc. has shortened my attention span. I don't have the patience for Act 1, Act II, anymore. I want to get to act III right away.
Further, at age 60, I've seen too much drama. I've seen many and know all the tricks. It easy to spot how the writers are just redoing "fill in the blank" only not as well.
Telling half the country you hate their guts.
The added subtext of "This country sucks" doesn't help either.
I sincerely doubt Ms. Greenfield wants to "Make us feel differently about the world around us". More likely she wants to make sure we don't "feel differently" in the wrong kind of way.
Hollywood is sorta like Ford with the old model T (supposedly). Ford said you can have any color you want - as long as it black. Hollywod says you can have all kinds of dramatic ideas and feelings - as long as its liberal.
I've been rewatching some ol Star Trek (TOS) and DS9 episodes, and realized the DS9s were more tightly written. Then figured out that's because they're 5 minutes shorter.
I cant imagine sitting down in front of a Live TV and watching DS9 with 15 minutes of commericals and station breaks. Crazy that we used to do that!
How can we mourn you hollywood when you keep aspirating through the pillow ticking? We'll mourn you less if we have to fetch a ziploc. Be a good vestige and hold still, won't you?
Gee Karl.... have you written any scripts that explore egotistical writers with Main Character syndrome, by any chance ?
All of the K-dramas I'm watching currently are an hour long. They're popular enough that they're on Netflix. Maybe it's not the length of the American shows, it's that Hollywood is making what Hollywood likes instead of what the viewers like.
I googled Sophie Cunningham one time and now she's taken over my feed. All she did was point her finger! And now she's a billion dollar industry.
Christopher Nolan is Batman and the 2-minute youtube video is Bane.
Alfred Hitchcock once said that the 90 minute movie length was due to bladder control issues.
Nolan says, "Here's three hours for you. Don't eat the lettuce."
People are watching a lot of series with multiple episode story arcs. They watch them on their own schedule, but they are following complex story lines. Deep Space 9 is more like a sci-fi trilogy than like the short story like TOS. You can see the transition clearly from the network era to the streaming era.
Logistics, a "Swedish art movie," holds the record for longest movie ever made, at 51,420 minutes. That's 35 days and 17 hours. Maybe show this in Guantanamo? Except they'd drag me before the World Court.
You can watch the whole movie at youtube! Yea.
Here's part one.
"make us feel differently about the world than when we started."
Neither different nor differently is correct. It's a RECAST situation. Feelings and to feel are not simply related.
Why won't you pay thirty bucks to watch our political propaganda in the theatre? Ingrates…
Why won’t people vote for Hillary! when we greased them up for years with Tea Leoni in Madam Secretary? Waa! Waa!
….sitcoms with a simple premise worked for over half a century. People who walk into a bar. People working together. Friends…sharp writing- try that, not let’s get em to vote for commies…
...because mental giants like Karl came up with the whole "It's Her Turn" campaign thinking "who didn't love 'Dynasty'!".
"Red Storm Rising" as an audiobook is almost unique (30 hours?) in that you can listen to a random part of it day after day and it is never annoying even when you know the plot. Exception for love scenes. Play it at night while you sleep and you're never bored.
Another series that's like that is the Joe DeMarco series by Mike Lawson. Play any episode at night while you're trying to sleep and you're never bored.
That behavior is rare. Most books are just tedious and you tune out instead of following them, on repeated listenings.
…in the old days there were companies who consistently made products nobody wanted, too. They’re all dead now. Nowadays if you have a leftie political angle you get propped up by Congress and ngos…
One trouble with today's authors is the improper use of "whomever" when "whoever" is called for. It turns up all over.
E.g. "gave advice to whomever was in the room."
Thanks to YouTube I have been able to listen to old episodes of My Word, a radio word game show from the BBC. Depending on the year, panelists can include such brains as Antonia Fraser, Anne Scott-James, and Dilys Powell. IIRC I used to listen to this on WHA back in the 1970s. Great displays of wit and learning.
I don't watch Tik-Tok or other short videos. I really got to like the mini-series format--8 to 12 50-minute episodes telling one story. That works especially well for novels, which always had to have large cuts to fit into a 2- or even 3-hour movie. My attention span is shortened when I'm on my computer because of email and web surfing, but I can still sit and watch good quality shows for an hour or two.
Hollywood is dark evil and depressing.
I like seeing it die.
"snazzy little works of art"
"It's a nice idea — art changing us — but didn't 2-minute pop songs change us?"
I would be skeptical if 2-minute pop songs do that, or that they are art instead of entertainment. One is not better than the other, but they have different objectives.
Plus I think switching the context from videos to music is inappropriate. There are "art films," but that's not what I understand Greenfield to be referring. Obama considered "The Wire" art but I did not. I still enjoyed it, though, and thought it novelistic, like Greenfield. And like Greenfield, I thought watching it time much better spent than watching hours of TikTok.
Youtube is the future.
Just don't approve of the leftwing google censorship
Yes there were, and actually still are, hour long dramas - hint they’re on streaming services because nobody wants to sit through commercials - but there were also a shit ton of half hour comedies.
hollywood is cancer and youtube is turning into cancer lite™.
I started to make a list of things I have watched that “ make me feel differently about the world than when we started” but lost interest after a few minutes.
Hollywood could start by making movies or televison shows about topics that interest me. After over 100 years all possible topics have been covered hundreds of times and new and fresh treatments are nearly impossible. YouTube videos are fresh, at least those not done by AI. I like seeing people show their hike on the Appalachian Trail or riding a bicycle across the country. I've watched people learning the piano or sax, kayak fishing and visiting parks and historic sites I will never see. Edited properly, the stories are always five to 15 minutes.
I’ve got to cop to the fact that my attention span has shortened and it’s not just because of turning 50.
I try to combat here & there by watching longer movies and reading the occasional long book (even re-read Middlemarch this year).
I’m sympathetic to this writer’s plight. But that horse has sailed.
E.g. "gave advice to whomever was in the room."
People who can’t use “I” or “me” correctly should never attempt to use “whomever” in a sentence. They don’t have the knowledge of subject and object. Teachers stopped teaching it in the late sixties.
It’s become lost knowledge like flying buttresses.
Crime shows.
Drug shows
murder murder murder
Nolan's never ending dark and depressing batman series.
Leftwing terrorism - approval of.
Hollywood makes crap.
The World Cup just ended. I know many here don't care, didn't care. My point in mentioning it is a normal futbol game are 2 uninterrupted 45-minute segments with the possibility of 2 more 15-minute uninterrupted segments. Of course, US marketing got involved and introduced "hydration breaks", because playing in the hotter US southern environment (inside air-conditioned buildings cooled to fall like temperatures) necessitated hydration. The reality, it interrupted the 45 minutes into 20 minutes segments and allowed for even more commercials. Just like the final halftime was expanded so they could sell even more ads.
The attention span hasn't gotten shorter. Marketers want shorter attentions to cram in even more commercials, just like they did when rock music went from averaging about 5 minutes to now pop music just over 2 minutes.
Now back to listening to my +90-minute podcasts... Don't get me started on a 3-hour JRE show.
Hiking shows, cycling adventure shows, cooking shows, science and astronomy shows, art history, puppy dog tales, (tails).. .. a few of my fav things. all Youtube.
Greg Gutfeld clips.
I did like the movie Flow a great deal, and I like silly movies like Peter Rabbit.
I'm sad because the world cup ended. Not really a soccer fan, the world cup and Euro cup are different. Imagine if everyone played Baseball, and we had "USA all star team" with our 25 best players playing against all the other countiries all-star teams. What a hoot that would be.
And in soccer they do that. Even Trump showed up for the finale and I don't think he's a soccer fan.
But yes the "Hydration beaks" were put in for TV to have commericals. We even Little "Bank of america" logos under the score on the screen.
The ratio of commerical to content on Youtube is much much higher than on regular TV, if you just count seconds/minutes. But it seems much less because its fast - like the content. And who doesn't push the "Skip" button?
BTW, if Hollywood needs "merger" to survive - we need to stop that.
Not sure what he's talking about. Streaming services' combined revenue in 2025 was $157b.
Make good content, er, entertainment, and people will watch. I just saw Coppola's 1974 "The Conversation" for the first time. The movie stars Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, John Cazale. Gripping. Couldn't take my eyes off the TV. This is a 52-year-old movie.
"preconceptions about preconceptions" Are they? Or empirically grounded observations about the preferences of "a surprising number of consumers"? Issue there was confirmation bias in media consumption rather than (just) fragmented attention. As a test, how many progs seek out conservatively-inclined content that challenges their views on immigration, criminals, or the benefits of business? (But then you ask, where can anyone find such content? OK, fair enough.)
Richard Wagner's operas are long by today's standards but then not so much.
It's not just short videos. There are so many things that you can see and hear and read on the internet or on your phone. People are still watching long form video. They just aren't going to cinemas or subscribing to cable.
The New Golden Age of Television that Greenfeld participated in (sort of) produced a lot of quality entertainment. Does it matter whether or not we call it "art"? The quality TV of the turn of the century did a lot to drive novels off the culture pages. Or was literary fiction dying anyway? And were novels still "art?"
Wait, I thought.that binge watching streams was killing things. I'm confused.
Debussy, also a newspaper music critic, wrote that Wagner was a beautiful sunset confused with a sunrise.
Ocean: "Imagine if everyone played Baseball, and we had "USA all star team" with our 25 best players playing against all the other countiries all-star teams. "
We do. The World Baseball Classic. It's not that popular yet, partially because MLB has a love/hate relationship with it. Venezuela won the most recent tournament, in March of this year. CC, JSM
There’s a 3-hour movie currently doing really well at the box office because it’s good. It’s not the length of your video that matters so much as the content.
Brevity is the soul of wit. -- Bill Shakesman
I would have read the article but I got sidetracked by a short video of a dog chasing a rutabaga on a string around the yard. Which led me to another video, this one about a Gömböc.
What was the question?
One. We recognize the pattern of the expensive stuff..
Two. We can always watch the original of the pattern which is free of wokey drool.
Three. The short stuff is full of new patterns. I often wonder what a story with all the new stuff in the short ideos would be like.
Summary:
Trained imaginations able to access the best and the newest reject wokey drool, however expensive it was to produce.
I think a lot of it comes down to how much time one is willing to invest. If a friend sends me a 2-minute video, I may watch it. If it's a 20-minute video, I probably won't. Be concise, make your point, hit your mark.
The Same
X camr to the big city and learned to snark about God and country and to vote for the Dems
X went to Europe and learned to snark about God and civilization and the vote and to talk up bombing.
Different
X stayed to home and learned to snark on Reddit, never got a job, and died in a Chinese-American labor camp. [Red Dawn updated]
TL:DR
I read this blog and its comments; the same for Instapundit and Lilek's The Bleat. Yet I have to push myself to read a full essay on Substack. If it doesn't grab my attention in the first paragraph or two, it's done. I suppose most of it is my ADHD (which I have had since second grade). I will watch FB reels, YT shorts and YT up to 20 minutes long. The exceptions are VT's Victor Davis Hanson and the Ruthless Variety show. Why those two? Informative and entertaining. Hollywood, take note
Explain to me like I'm a five year old how watching an hourlong episode of "Bonanza" in 1966-- with interruptions every four minutes or so for a 2 to 3-minute chunk of "a word from our sponsors"-- somehow demonstrates that we had a much longer attention span back then.
Short videos are just another choice we now have. I see them as the video equivalent of short articles or news stories, as opposed to short stories or full books.
I hardly ever sit and watch an entire movie or long TV show in one sitting, mainly because I give myself only an hour every evening for that sort of thing.
Each short grabs the attention, gives a momentary boost. Then there is another one to scroll into, right away. What's not to like?
"Money Manger said...
I went on a street-food tour in Cambodia last year. One stop was the insect vendor. Fried spiders, crickets, beetles, centipedes.
Crunchy and salty, like the residue at the bottom of a snack-food bag.
No ants."
Well if the food was better ants would show up....
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