Are attention spans shortening or are audiences getting bored?
Before jumping in, a quick flag. On Monday Jo Redfern and I joined Unofficial Partner podcast this week, talking sport, YouTube, audiences and revenues. Do have a listen.
Are attention spans shrinking or are we struggling to grab attention?
I often hear various sentiments about the direct-to-consumer market - primarily meaning YouTube - from TV producers and freelancers, which can act as a barrier to exploring this space as a place to build a business that can reinforce a TV operation. Indeed, I’ve written a few times about some of the sentiments in the past, for example:
What I’m trying to do is tease out the different issues and concerns, as these issues can often be collapsed together and act as a collective blocker. So for example, these are are the sentiments I’ve been hearing of late:
Audience appetite (or lack thereof) for particular TV-like genres
Changing audience behaviours meaning TV-like formats and durations are not appealing
It is too late to build the necessary YouTube subscriber numbers to be able to compete
The lack of a financial model to fund the whole enterprise.
In this post, I’m going to tackle the second one on the above list, which I’ve heard several times recently: which is that younger people’s attention spans have shrunk and therefore the longer form content that TV makes isn’t of interest to them. The inference being that there isn’t a demand on YouTube and other online platforms for the type of shows TV producers make, and therefore this isn’t a space for them.
Before getting to the issue itself of attention spans; this sentiment seems to be based on the underlying belief that YouTube is for young people.
And in one way, yes this is true; for the past decade, the bulk of heavy usage of YouTube is by young people - as in kids and teens. So while all demographics use YouTube, with only a few percentage points between the youngest and the oldest groups, the most active users are young, and also according to Barb figures earlier in the year, YouTube viewing on the TV-set is skewed towards heavy users, with 25% of users generating 87% of watch time (compared with commercial TV viewing where the heaviest quartile generates 68% of viewing).
And YouTube has been the number 1 destination for kids for over a decade now.
However, it doesn’t follow that YouTube is only for kids and young people. Instead, the whole point of YouTube is not that it is one demographic or one market as it isn’t a channel like E4 is for youth or ITV3 is for older murder mystery fans. Rather, it is a platform used by (nearly) the entire world, where there are highly fragmented audiences split over the zillions of channels that are available. So rather than seeing it as a mass platform with an overarching singular demographic and dominant user behaviour, instead view it as a way to reach and build a specific target audience.
After all, no one is trying to reach all of YouTube - well, I’m sure there are a couple of creators who have that as a lofty ambition.
The focus needs to be on identifying some sort of niche audience, which can be around age (but can be any age, not just kids), and also interests, hobbies, genres and so on. Finding out what these particular people do, how they behave, what their daily media consumption patterns are, and what they are passionate about is key to having a chance of success.
On the platform, you can find example after example of successful and popular channels that have hit a rich seam with a particular audience that is not kids or teens. To pick just one, Dusty Lumber Co has 4m subscribers on YouTube, and if you look at the comments below his videos, it is pretty obvious his audience are typically older male power tool fans.
I can add many more of these types of channels, but frankly you don’t have to look far to find original channels targeting an older demographic - they just might not make the Time 100 Creator lists but still are popular.
Another way to view these online video platforms - especially YouTube - is that there is a huge available older audience that has yet to be tapped into. So, the opportunity to build a direct-to-consumer audience is greater with older demographics rather than necessarily the hyper-served kids and teens audience (although for those kids and youth specialists, that too).
Moving on to the issue of attention spans and whether they are shortening, and if they are, does that mean a) YouTube isn't a place for longer form TV type content and/or b) is TV as a popular format will end up dying out.
Firstly, any issue with attention spans shortening doesn’t apply just young people, but instead to all of us who are heavy users of technology and devices. Indeed, I can track the point at which it feels like my attention span started to crater to particular day in April 2008 when I created my Twitter account….
Jon Stahl has written a very interesting and thoughtful piece on this subject, which is very much worth your time (and I won’t rehash all the arguments here, so please do read it all).
In summary, what we often call declining attention span is actually tech addiction in action. Separate out that issue, and what we are all living through is a crisis of abundance:
With that much stuff, audiences are impatient - they’re not going to sit through 5 boring minutes of video with the promise that things get interesting in minute 6.
Abundance of content created fierce competition. Competition bred audience impatience. Impatience rewarded whoever could hook viewers fastest. And hooking audiences consistently for extended periods requires exceptional storytelling talent - which is rare.
The result? Short-form content dominates because most creators can only hold attention for brief moments before their limited storytelling abilities run out.
So, what we are experiencing is an explosion of choice for our attention, where previously it was a handful of TV channels, the radio, books or going outside and finding something else to do. In that world, where there was less choice, then the content didn’t need to work as hard to grab people and hold on to them. Over time, with more and more TV channels being added, the harder each channel had to work to stop people channel hopping. When the internet emerged, then a whole host of new behaviours developed in response to the content and platforms that launched:
The type of content that was first published to the internet by users was limited by the capability of their kit, their own abilities, as well as broadband connections - as a result, it was shorter, lower quality and often filmed on webcams
Over time, as technology and internet connections improved (combined with the ability to make money) pushed up the quality
For much of the past 20 years, the bulk of viewing of content on platforms like YouTube or TikTok has been on handheld devices, which leans towards shorter content
Outside of a relatively small number of creators, the money made is not comparable to TV budgets and therefore this acted as a cap on ambitions and the ability to produce TV-like shows
The growth in viewing on connected TVs has happened in the last few years, and so there is a lag in understanding this change in user behaviour
Thanks to fragmentation, new platforms like TikTok or new trends like vertical drama apps are in addition to other platforms, rather than a replacement.
Another key change is how we consume media throughout the day, and what length of content depends on the platform, device and mental mode the individual is in. When a person is on a mobile on the bus home from school or work, they are likely to skip around short videos on TikTok or YouTube Shorts. If however they are at home, watching something they are super passionate about, then they will watch not just TV or film-length videos but also possibly significantly longer.
And so the abundance of choice triggering an impatient reaction to content that isn’t necessarily capturing the audiences’ attention is only half the story. The other half of the story is about what happens when you do grab their attention. As this piece written by a Gen Zer says:
As a Gen Z myself, I can’t deny our infamous short attention span. Yes, I’ll scroll past dozens of posts in seconds without a second thought.
But here’s what marketers often miss: when something genuinely catches my interest, I’ll dive deep—watching 45-minute video essays, reading lengthy threads, or falling into three-hour YouTube rabbit holes about niche topics.
So we have a paradox in how younger audience interact with content which is mistaken for short attention spans, where younger audiences are using short and ultra short content in one mode, often as a filtering process. When interest is sparked, this can lead on to three-hour YouTube deepdives. It is at this point you can end up with hugely passionate fandoms who want more of everything a creator, brand, IP or talent has to give.
As an aside, the biggest loser in all of this is arguably not TV (or TV-like professionally produced content on whatever platform it is found), but reading for pleasure. This graphic did the rounds a few weeks ago, however this decline is not new, and tracks back to the invention of mass media generations ago which resulted in audio visual content being preferred to the written word.
Back to the main point. What is familiar here is the channel hopping mode that has been around since the remote control was invented. Put the TV on, and see what’s worth watching, and if it isn’t, then off you hop to the next channel until something grabs your attention.
It is this behaviour that has been put on steroids, where baked into the user experience of the various apps and devices is constant pushing of alternative content and channels which encourage people to skip around and therefore generating little loyalty to a channel, creator or brand. Plus all audiences have so much content, they are constantly (and impatiently) sifting and filtering to see what might grab their attention. However, once a channel or creator has jumped over the high bar to earn attention and appreciation, then chances are users not only stick with the channel, but they’ll want more and more - this after all is what has built the devout followers of creators like Sidemen, hit podcasts and so on. This is where a creator, IP, talent or channel moves into becoming a fandom, which is where things really start to work.
To illustrate this point, I thought I’d focus on ‘YouTube’s Daredevil’, Michelle Khare. She is a big time creator with her brand ‘Challenge Accepted’, where she trains to be a Navy Seal, or a contortionist, or any other type of fairly extreme job. You might recall she also led the charge to try to get a primetime Emmy nomination - although she wasn’t successful this year, at some point her or one of the numerous other creators like her will surely get a nom.
She is a great demonstration how many of the beliefs we have about the direct-to-consumer market (and YouTube in particular) can be misplaced. For example:
‘Young people have no attention span’ » look at all Michelle’s videos, they are all 40+ minutes in length
‘Young people don’t watch factual content’ » we don’t have access to Michelle’s channel’s demographic information, but her popularity on both YouTube and TikTok suggest a young(ish) audience
‘Success on YouTube means posting lots of short videos several times a week’ » Michelle started publishing regularly nine years ago, and for at least the last few years publishes around one video a month
‘These are all small productions or one operator productions’ » click on the video below, and you can see a fully fledged production crew similar to a TV project.
Which leads to this recent post she’s made on LinkedIn, where she’s announced that she is going to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven consecutive days in November, and her shout out is seeking brands to sponsor her in this endeavour.
This encourages the question: how is this as a concept different to TV? Indeed, for those working in production, how many times have you come across an idea like this, or a variation there of? Think of all the ultra marathons out there, plus the various mountain climbing challenges, cycling from pole to pole, rowing across the Atlantic and so on. For those in development, how many times have you passed on these ideas, as you don’t think they would be of interest to TV commissioners? And for all the commissioners reading this, think of how many times you’ve been pitched these ideas which you’ve probably turned down?
This isn’t to say that these types of endurance events should have been commissioned and are missed opportunities for TV - not at all. After all, we can all remember a whole host of these types of shows in the past - for example, Ben Fogle and James Cracknell rowing the Atlantic in Through Hell or High Water or World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji more recently on Amazon with Bear Grylls.
However, it is possible that Michelle will make a success of this endeavour in a way that might not have worked on TV. And this is for several reasons:
She has built a dedicated fandom who are highly invested in her and everything she does
5.2m subscribers on YouTube, and 845m views; 505k followers on Instagram; 249k on TikTok with 6.4m likes
Her financing model has multiple reinforcing parts: 1) ads on YouTube 2) brand partnerships such as Adobe and Red Bull and 3) a subscription fitness app under the ‘Challenge Fitness’ brand
These brand partnerships enable her to do bigger productions and challenges
In turn, these partners (as well as all her crew and participants) are all heavily integrated into her content and therefore they in turn promote their involvement across their channels thus driving further awareness.
So she’s now got these bigger brand partnerships that enable the type of scale of production as demonstrated by the above Tom Cruise stunt video (and it appears that the recent Red Bull relationship was pretty key in making this step change). However, here she is talking in 2022, explaining that on their average videos, she spends $20 - 30k each, and then for bigger videos, they can only do them with dedicated sponsors involved.
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And this is the same approach for the marathon’s challenge where she’s seeking brand sponsorship, just that it has become more ambitious as she’s grown her business. When you think of the production and logistical effort involved in travelling to seven continents in seven days, then think about the spectacle potential for specific (non-competing) brands, and you can see how the production costs could be covered through these deals. For example: sports attire, flights, hotels and travel operators, camera kit, software companies, energy drinks, supplements or treatments for the fitness and wellness market and so on.
Here is a great Colin and Samir interview with Michelle outlining her playbook, back in 2022.
So hopefully this gives a fairly fulsome picture about audience (and in particular younger people) appetite for longer form content, as well as how shorter content can actually act as marketing for longer videos.
As for the other three reasons I listed at the top for TV production companies or freelancers not to explore the direct to consumer market:
Audience appetite (or lack thereof) for particular TV-esque genres
It is too late to build the necessary YouTube subscriber numbers to be able to compete
The lack of a financial model to fund the enterprise.
I’ll come back to these again in the next few weeks.
Spirit Studios and Night Train’s new micro drama series
A quick reminder - microdramas are short form vertical video series on apps like ReelShort and DramaBox, where each episode ends on a cliff hanger and users are encouraged to watch more either by gathering coins or paying for more access.
There is a whole host of activity going on in this area, with new companies being launched, such as the MicroCo joint venture with horror specialists Cineverse and Banyan Ventures - more on that here:
And this week, it was announced that Spirit Studios and Night Train have had new microdrama series in paid development.
This is such an interesting announcement for several reasons. Firstly, Spirit Studios has a strong multiplatform track record in a range of genres and formats; including scripted projects currently in development. We are seeing more instances where previously distinctive and rigid genres or domains - scripted or unscripted, TV or digital - have lowered the barriers, and increasingly companies are freer to slalom across content type, genres, formats and platforms.
This change prompts great opportunities - producers who previously might have only ever worked in scripted now can consider making games shows or feature documentaries, while those factual producers who have long harboured aspirations to do drama or comedy now can see routes to do just that. And yes, as this also means those in TV or film can meander all over social and video platforms too. This also means that those from other markets are entering TV and film as the relative high walls to these markets are also dropping; so creators, brands, athletes, musicians, advertising executives and so on.
Secondly, it appears that much of the talent both on screen and the writers will have some sort of following on social platforms already, and therefore this creates many more opportunities for the series to be promoted via their channels. Indeed, it was Matt Campion from Spirit who recently shared a great example of this clever practice: the Brooklyn Coffee Shop comedy series where each week a different comedy creator is a guest star, who then goes on to share their episode with their followers.
There is more detail on that series in this post below, about half way down:
Thirdly, the new microdrama apps have been heavily dominated by potboiler romance storylines, however the model is likely to work for a whole host of other wider stories that can generate a lot of cliff hangers such as crime, horror, factual and more. So it will be interesting to see what is the story focus of this new Spirit series.
What producers need to know - #4
Here is the fourth of the 36 things I think producers should know to plan for the future, that I shared as three paid posts a few months ago. I’m sharing one per week for the foreseeable:
Competitors for audience attention now include anyone and everyone
Previously, the competition for attention in the living room was between TV channels. So success was measured on share of available audience, and while that available audience might fluctuate up and down dependent on what else is happening in the world - say a sunny period may see fewer people sitting inside watching TV - in general, it was accepted that the job of TV broadcasters and producers was to firstly get people to sit down and watch the telly and secondly then make shows that were more appealing that what was on other channels. And perhaps a third task was to get people to sit through the ads and/or subscribe for particular packages.
Well, now the task is much more complicated, as not only there such a growth in competition for people’s time before they even come in to the living room to turn on the TV set, once they have turned on the set, then there is an acre more competition for what they want to do there never mind the TV schedules - games consoles, a whole host of streamers, YouTube and soon other platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
This is before we even come to think about who else is producing content to try to grab audiences’ attention - from supermarkets to retailers, sporting athletes and teams, make-up and fashion brands. It is across every sector and every demographic.
It is impossible to list all of these competitors here, instead I’ll pick out just two examples:
Foot Asylum - the shoe retailer’s innovative content strategy put them in competition with Channel 4 and other youth broadcasters like BBC3 or MTV
Walmart buying smart TV manufacturer Vizio.
In the previous world, both Foot Asylum and Walmart were potential advertisers for broadcasters. But now, they are not only potential advertisers, they are also competitors and also might also be partners both for content distribution and audience acquisition.
I’ll pause going further on this point here, but the general takeaway is that where previously, TV networks were competing with other TV networks for audiences and ad money, and TV producers were competing with other TV producers for commissions, now no longer holds water.
As the barriers to entry drop, so do more competitors enter the market and they can come from anywhere - from a single creator through to a toy brand, a games app to a high street retailer.
Lastly, as well as being competitors, all these players also offer opportunities to those who are open to partnerships.
If you’d like the full set of 36 things I think producers should know, they are here:
What TV producers should know part 1 - this first post is about the market context and covers the external factors beyond our control
What TV producers should know part 2 - this second post is about what is within our control in how we can respond to the external market
What TV producers should know part 3 - this final post is about some practicalities to think about when planning for the future.
Find out more about me and the purpose of this newsletter, say hi via email hello@businessoftv.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Great to guest alongside you Jen!
I’m always amused by moral panic about attention spans, and recently posted about this myself. I remeber it in the 1980s, and TV was the culprit. There has never been much evidence for it. I’m glad you pointed out the channel hopping too. It’s exactly TikTok - without the algorithm. As far back as Plato people have been complaining about new technology destroying attention spans (writing was the culprit there). And if you step back for a second, what is the proposed biological mechanism? When there is choice, people just have low tolerance for bad products. This is very much a direct marketing era and as David Ogilvy - the great expert on direct marketing - said “The customer isn’t a moron.”
Also, as a heavy user and premium subscriber to YouTube who is not 15. The truth is you can just get more unique, better quality - often higher production value - shows in niche areas with weekly or monthly drops. And most of those range 10mins - 2hrs in length, with most about 10 minutes. And no ads if you are on premium. Technology has completely changed how easy you can light and shoot for basic talking head/doc/reality stuff.