The “terrifying” switch-off in Digital drama
Short form storytellers can have as little as 12 seconds to grab their audience, says TV exec.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
In the brave new worls of short-form digital drama, storytellers are getting crude lessons about the attention span of their audience.
Thanks to the technology and the alternative distractions (YouTube, gaming, chat, browsing etc), content makers can see the second a user disengages -and it ain’t pretty.
Speaking at Series Mania this week, ABC’s Head of Comedy Rick Kalowski said, “The behaviour used to be with a new show you wanted to check out you’d watch the first episode and if you didn’t love it you’d hang around for the second.
“Then it became if you didn’t like the first episode you wouldn’t come back for week 2.
“Now it’s gotten to the point if something doesn’t convince you, you turn off because there is so much good stuff.
“But with the short-form stuff it is absolutely terrifying. You can see with people that if you don’t get ‘em -to quote Rocky III– ‘there is no tomorrow.’
“You’ve got 12 seconds, 20 seconds….. story is as important, if not more important. You have no time to f*** around. No sweeping, beautiful shots or shenanigans.
“It’s terrifying.”
3 Responses
This is reflected everywhere in life nowadays. I have even found myself frustrated with old movies having a song and opening credits. It is scary to realise that your mind won’t tolerate 30 seconds of what seems like dead time.
“So much good stuff”. Really? On free to air? Sure there’s lots of choice but not much quality. Last night nothing appealed on FTA after 730 pm. We switched over to Stan. I would say that the FTA networks have bombarded us with so much reality rubbish that viewers are simply looking elsewhere. They have created this situation. They also have the power to fix it.
Think you will find he was referring to streaming too. Over 500 dramas from the US this year.