TV is getting dumber

Americans, it seems, have fallen back in love with going to the movies.

The Odyssey is nudging up on a billion dollars in ticket sales.

Spider-Man brand new day already hit a billion if you're gonna forget who I am. What? What are you talking about? A tiny indie horror movie called Obsession did almost half a billion at the box office. "There is not you so, so, so, so, so, so much."

"I don't think I could live without you." For a while, the smartman he said movies were dead. Hollywood pivoted to make big bets on micro dramas. Disney Fox, Alexis O'Hammy and Kim Kardashian, Chris Jenner, all these bold face names poured millions of dollars into the teeny tiny next big thing.

We're gonna explain why they did coming up on today's plane from box. "No, it's a day!" "It's way!"

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So why not you? Try O'Do for free at O'Do.com, that's O-D-O-O dot com. I'm CT Jones, I am a staff writer at Rolling Stone where I cover entertainment, culture, and the internet. What exactly is a micro-drama?

And a fantastic question. And micro-dramas are these short episodic films and they're filmed portrait mode. And they're meant to be watched and shared primarily on your cell phone. So as you're scrolling, clicking on the apps, that's where micro-dramas appear. Okay, great, and now I have so many more questions.

Micro-drama, micro-drama is like me texting my sister about my brother. What is it called a micro-drama? Yeah, the whole point of them is that they're short, right? So they're in between films and TV seasons. But there are 60 to 90 episodes in these episodes can range anywhere from four minutes to ten to seven.

It depends entirely on the project that you're watching. So that's why they call them micro. But it also refers to kind of the speed and the production. So we're talking about projects that have very, very, very, very tiny budgets. And they have a very, very, very tiny shoot time.

So all together, micro-drama. What is the appeal?

“Yeah, I think one of the really interesting things we've seen about the internet”

in the past couple of years is that the way people scroll are changing the ways your attention span works. So we've already seen in cases like Madmen. Not great, Bob. And ugly, Betty.

Hi, that's me. People are watching things on their phone now. And that there is a link between how long people are willing to watch TV show, even if it's caught up into a hundred, 200 parts. If it means that they don't have to get off of their phone, go on to their laptop

and log on to the streaming service where they know that that show exists. And it's also created for these kind of attention spans. So like, you don't have time to probably watch four episodes of ugly Betty between your commute and the office. But if you're on the subway and you have access to data, you're like, I could watch two

45 second clips of ugly Betty.

You are an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswoman. All right, so what's an example of a micro-drama that's super popular? Like, what is the young and the restless micro-drama or the breaking bad micro-drama?

“So the best thing about micro-dramas is that they're not really dependent on these type”

of audiences that will give them the raw. So basically, there are a bunch of titles that I could name, for instance, loving my brother's best friend. You have got to get over this crunch, he's your brother's best friend, or I kiss to CEO and he liked it.

Well, boss, who was that? I would see you kiss anyone like that at ages. The titles themselves aren't very inventive, but they don't need to be to capture audiences. Until Nathan, I'm not going to kill his sister. I'm going to marry him.

I can't be with you, I'm just a man, I'm just a prosthetic. It's Aiden Gold is a where-one, an alpha, and I refuse to be his main.

“How is anyone, everyone, how is money being made here and for whom?”

Yeah, so basically what happens, it's kind of a free-be situation where you will either

get an ad, served an ad for these micro-dramas, usually a very poignant part of the show. I have a proposition for you, kind of a proposition. I know you situation, you're working three jobs, you got a pile of medical bills and you're behind and everything else. How do you know all of that?

That is exciting, is narrative driven. I will take care of all that, I'll take care of you. All you have to do is one thing for me. And then it cuts, right before you find out what happens next. What's the catch?

And then the ad pops up and it's like, please go to the app to continue more. You have to marry my daughter. But for people who are active, micro-drama watchers, what usually happens is you have a free

“subscription and you can watch up to a certain amount of episodes of a particular show.”

And then it costs anywhere between four to $15 to upload more credits so that you can finish the rest of the show. And a lot of these micro-dramas, because they are kind of reliant on these instant transactions, it's instant feedback, right, it's people who want to scroll, who want to keep scrolling and keep following this.

They're willing to be like, okay, here's $2. Here's $3. Here's $2 to finish the show. When in reality, if you look at it, most of these micro-drama apps in a yearly format cost far more than a Netflix subscription or a Hulu subscription or a Max subscription as a work.

Where do micro-dramas come from? Micro-dramas are actually an import, the very first place where they really took off in popularity was actually in China. (laughing) (speaking in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language) Between 2018 and 2020, we saw this huge huge rise in interest in micro-dramas.

Look, they're over a billion internet users in China.

Half of them have watched these mini drama series before. And a third of them are scrolling through them every day. So it's a huge industry. 35. But what China really set apart from this was that you could make micro-dramas.

Make micro-dramas fast and cheap. And a lot of other countries saw the success of that and decided we can do this as well. So when the United States kind of took on all of the things that made Chinese micro-dramas so successful, they ran into this huge wall, which was we can make things fast and we can make things cheap. I don't know if the actors are going to like it very much.

“What is it like to be an actor and actress in a micro-drama?”

It all depends on who hires you. (applause) A lot of micro-dramas and LA have tried to set themselves apart, especially these newer companies. As places where you can get great pay, you can kind of learn on the fly.

You're getting a bunch of things. And a lot of training that you might not get, say, if you were straight out of NYU's Tish. But other experiences on other sets could mean that if you sign with a micro-drama company who is just in it to make the content, as fast as possible, a lot of actors alleged these growing hours, poor pay, racial disparity in leading roles and lack of stun safety. I talked to one vertical actress, 24 year old Molly Anderson, who told me about kind of how much harder it is for women who are acting in these micro-dramas than men.

Men have these beautiful, a lot of times handsome roles where they're the sex symbols and micro-dramas have mainly female audiences. Molly told me the male actor is going to be dressed up and a very nice suit. And maybe he's got to shed a single tear once or twice. But for the most part, he's going to stand in the back, brood, and then sweep you off your feet. For actresses, you scream, cry, throw up on command, and then you run off to go get water port.

You're not going to cry. You're just going to cry.

You're going to cry like you've never cried before, but you're spirit.

You're spirit, you're made solid. That's the typical day. [applause] Yikes. Are you getting paid for 70 episodes?

One of the interesting things about micro-dramas is that the contracts also vary wildly depending on what company you're working with. So as a writer, you could be looking at $2,000 to just hand and a script. As an author who has a book idea that they want to kind of take and use a thousand. $5,000, it really, really depends on who you're working with and how much they want it. For an actor, you're probably looking at $500 a day, which is super, super, super affordable and really great rate for people who are non-union.

And if anything, you're committing $100,000 here.

Costs and money that would frankly disappear are round up to small percentages for giant projects. I've talked to a bunch of vertical actors who are kind of caught in the middle of this. They see the way that the industry is changing. And they love the idea of Hollywood executives being more willing to say yes to stories. What they're concerned about is that verticals and particularly the way that they are made will leave these actors behind in the process.

Hollywood is obviously having a lot of problems right now. So if you're a Hollywood and you're seeing, hey, there's a way to do 70 episodes and pay an actor, you know, $500 a day and still make a little bit of money with every single person who views them.

“Do you think that this is going to change Hollywood?”

I actually don't. I think micro dramas are incredibly interesting.

But I think the problem Hollywood sees right now is frankly a cowardice. Hollywood is drowning right now under this exhaustion with IP because for the past five years, executives have been afraid to make creative content. Micro dramas, on the other hand, succeed by creating serialized content with storylines that are virtually public domain. So it's IP just so many IPs crammed together that you're like, I guess I'll watch it.

Sure I'll watch this where we'll billionaire CEO. Do you see what I mean? All of those buzzwords smashed together. I don't think this will change Hollywood, but I think it's because micro dramas aren't intending to change Hollywood. Micro dramas aren't about, you know, taking over the Emmys, taking over the Oscars. I doubt that you could find a micro drama CEO who says, yes, I think kissing my brother's best friend is going to sweep this year at the Oscars. That's fine. I'm not afraid of some competition.

But what they want to do is target viewers during their in-between time. These kinds of passive scrolls that you can know can kind of give your attention to an ad, or a three-minute clip about a cheerleader or a hockey player or a kind of sexy world.

“This is where micro dramas thrive, and this is why I think they won't ever actually take over Hollywood,”

because they don't want your attention. Micro dramas work the best when you're not really watching them, because if you were going to watch a micro drama, like you might watch the new Springsteen movie in a dark room with your closest friends, you've got nothing but time to look at this screen. I bet if you watched a micro drama like that, you'd go, wait a minute, I don't think this makes sense.

This might not even be good.

How could rules were never her thing?

Not be good, just me. CT Jones writes for Rolling Stone. Coming up is TV getting Dumber. Yes, of course it is. You don't need me to explain that. But did studio executives order it to get Dumber? We're going to ask.

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Which seat should I take? Today's point is so back with Julia Alexander. Julia is a media correspondent at Puck News.

So Julia, in the first half of the show, we talked about micro dramas. You know what these are?

Yes. Do you have a favorite one? In the sense that they're all the same, I suppose I enjoy all of them as much as I dislike all of them. What is the appeal? What is the love of hate grounded in? Do you know what it is? It's not for me and I understand the love for it though.

“I think the venn diagram of people who like micro dramas and people who love to read.”

Smuddy fan fiction is like one giant circle. And I think actually the appeal of micro dramas is that they're not a netflix original or a Martin Scorsese movie. They're the complete opposite. There are guilty pleasure at 99th century chapter. We were going to title this episode the second screen problem, but nobody actually knows what that means.

When people in the industry talk about the second screen problem, what do they mean? So it depends on who you're asking in the industry. 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 or the iPad, your surfing, Exxon while watching a TV showing your big TV,

The second screen 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 or the problem of the second screen, rather, is one of does the adoration for TikTok and Instagram reels in YouTube shorts? I mean that people will spend enough less time with our streaming services that they'll cancel and we have to fight back for those subscribers.

But before the phone came around, people would do this with magazines and they were doing with books and they would do with other things.

We've always been distracted by other forms of entertainment, competing for our attention.

We've just never had as many things competing for such tiny slices of the attention pot. And Instagram is much more compelling than reading a Dean Coon's novel during the TV show. Yeah, it requires far less brain power. I want to ask you about something that got everyone so angry when we found out about it earlier this year. So there was reporting in N+1 saying that Netflix executives are telling writers to dumb down the writing.

In TV shows and movies and make it really clear what is happening. So this scene from the movie Irish Wish is used as an example in their reporting. We spent a day together. I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain. But that doesn't give you the right to question my life choices.

Tomorrow I'm marrying Paul Kennedy. Do people in the industry as you are? Do people cover the industry? Do they know that this was happening? So I think it's important to clarify that no one is out and by no one I mean no executive is out saying dumb this down.

That's really going to help me do the increase prices again.

What they're saying if this is being said to people and I have personally never heard it in my reporting.

What they would be saying is we understand that our audience has less attention than they might have 10 years ago and our audience has more opportunities to put that attention on another video format. Whether they're watching Reels or TikTok. And we understand that that is our direct competitor in a way that someone flipping through a magazine or watching a movie. That was not necessarily going to be a direct competitor.

So it's not about dumbing down. It's about acknowledging where the future of competition is coming from. That actually makes a lot of sense to me from the perspective of the business. What actually surprised me is how many people seem so furious about this.

So I hate scripted television so much, especially lately.

I don't know, it's just like mind numbing. But I can't help but feel that this change is going to lead to the downfall of society.

“Where do you think as consumers of the stuff as the people watching?”

Why does this make us angry? I think we all want to believe that we are of higher quality calibre than in fact we are. And by that I mean you look at all these people who are outraged. I mean I'd be outraged. If someone came out and said Netflix is purposely dumbing stuff down.

I'd be like, well that sucks and I don't like it. But in reality I was watching Frankenstein the other night with my fiance. And he was playing Candy Crush the entire time. And then in a group chat the next day he's complaining about the quality of films. But the quality of the film such as Frankenstein, a beautiful Garamodotorum movie, which is not the lensy low-end Irish wish, is nothing to do with a Netflix executive coming out and saying, you know, you've got to dumb this down.

It has everything to do with the fact that they're responding to what people are saying in the actions that they do. And if people really did not want Irish wish, they would not watch Irish wish. But the Lindsey low-hand Christmas movies, for example, and all those other kind of Netflix fair that we associate with a specific trope are heavily watched. One of the effects of what you're seeing play out is that we had a golden age of television about 15 years ago. It's your job. I give you money. You give me ideas.

“You never say thank you. That's what the money is for.”

Say my name. And I's a bird. You're goddamn right. I'm so looking forward to seeing your mother again. When I'm with her, I'm reminded of the virtues of the English. But isn't she American?

Exactly. It's kind of resign and I'm about to be a president. Oh, perfect. 15 years ago, a lot of the bigger movie stars and the writers and directors in film who didn't want to make Marvel movies and didn't want to make big sci-fi blockbusters move to TV. And so for a period of about 10 to 15 years, we had a great moment of just stunning, well-written, gorgeous television.

And then what happened was the competition for eyeballs on the TV screen started to really speed up and you had YouTube come in. Oh, wow. Double rainbow all the way across the sky. You had Mr. Beast.

“Who would win in a game of tug of war? The strongest man on earth or a hundred kids?”

All the sudden people are watching this type of fair on their television screens. And that meant that they were watching less Netflix or less Hulu or whatever it might have been. So all of the prestige fair that really worked on cable 20 years ago, it stopped working as much today. And so you're getting a lot more unintentional slopp.

But it's not because they're trying to produce it. It's that they're trying to produce just more content than ever before. And if you put quantity over quality, you're going to inherently get some rough gems with mixed in with all those diamonds. Could you envision a world where viewers say we don't want the slopp? We don't want the dumb shows. We want prestige or is that unlikely to ever happen?

I actually think that's exactly what's going to happen.

Oh, it's going to take some time. But here's what I think's going to happen.

The amount of generative AI contents we talk about so or two. You think about even these micro dramas a little bit, which in part or being made because of generative AI technologies that are allowing them to make things cheaper and faster? This is going to increase the amount of content. We're going to enter an infinite content era and a lot of it's going to be really sloppy. And as humans who love good storytelling, it's like when you are seeking out really good TV and I try to seek out really good TV and films.

And so you might have an Apple TV plus or Netflix in 20 years, 25 years before the $50 a month.

“But you'll pay for it because they will end up leaning into higher quality programming and backing away from some of the slopp.”

As that slopp takes over all of our other content viewing, but in order to get to that breaking point, things have to break a little bit further. It is incredible to me that your take is so optimistic. I don't think I've heard this before everyone's so down on the future of movies and television. I mean, there is a world that is inevitable and where YouTube will eat everyone's lunch. It's kind of, it's been happening. It'll continue to happen.

The baseline quality of YouTube videos will likely get better over time as creators get more savvy, but it's never going to replace the need to watch a really good movie or really good TV show.

“Now I think the number of those titles will come down and I think that's going to be really cataclysmic for people who work in Hollywood and people who work in this industry.”

Because you'll have fewer jobs. But in terms of producing really high caliber art, throughout it all, really high quality art has always stayed and people have always sought it out. I really do believe that there's a world for some of these string services, not all.

Some of these directors and actors not all to continue to leave a really strong mark, but it's going to be a much smaller industry than it has been over the last 100 years.

But there will still be an industry and it will still make good stuff, and it won't charge you 99 cents a chapter.

“Julia Alexander, Media Course Wanted With Puck News, Thank You.”

Kelly Westinger produced today's show, "Jolly Myers Edited Patrick Boyd" and Adrian Lily are our engineers, Miles Bryan and Melissa Hirsch check the facts. I'm Newell King, it's today explained. (Music) Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back, so I thought it would be fun.

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