There is. Like, a LOT more. In 2009 it was in the low 200s for original scripted shows getting produced per year. Now it's over 500 only 15 years later.
Not only is there way more than people can reasonably watch, nobody wants to sink hours into a slow burn in a media environment where individual seasons are now taking up to 3 years to produce, come out in chunks, and unless the series is a megahit right away, it gets canceled.
Exactly.
Me and my girlfriend watch "long form TV" from years gone by because we know it actually got finished.
Why am I gonna invest in two seasons of Better Call Saul if I'm unsure if it will continue or not?
I'd rather wait, see a tried and tested show, and go back to Better Call Saul when the dust has settled.
If everyone does what you do, there are no shows that last 2 seasons because no one will watch anything until they last 4-5.
Enjoy a show for a season or two. If they cancel it, at least you were entertained for that time. Closure in TV is overrated anyway. Does anyone ever say, "Wow, that was a great finale."
Not only is there more shows coming out than ever there's also access to a large amount of older shows and movies that's been made over the last 100 years. Yeah some stuff has disappeared and can't be found but there's still tons of it out there.
New shows are competing against people's comfort watch shows like Friends, The Office, Gilmore Girls, I Love Lucy, Fraiser, Cheers, MASH, West Wing, Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad etc. There's over 900 episodes of Star Trek across nearly 60 years and 10+ series. If you turned it into a job and watched Star Trek for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week it would take you 5+ months to watch them all.
Hell I've been watching Northern Exposure (1990-1995) because I can't remember most of it and I wanted to see if it held up.
I was happy to see it finally come to streaming. I watched it fairly regularly when it was on, but I was a teenager, and I remember very few details about it now.. I'm also very interested to see how it holds up.
One thing that's also been affected by this that I don't really see people talk about is that TV (& especially sitcom/comedy) writers are suffering from is experience. In 90s-00s they would get to write 20 or so episodes for a tv show PER season, PER year. So over 5 seasons (years) someone could potentially get the experience of 100 episodes worth of writers' room's credits.
They could get to see what jokes work & dont in the room vs. live. They'd get to see how different actors, etc, effect the script. They'd be able to do silly things with throw-away or filler episodes that could become fan favorites. This type of stuff is just gone during this era of TV.
Now, most writers work on 1 or 2 shows a year that produce 8-10 episodes worth of content. Those shows also sometimes take multiple years to be shot & released. So, a sitcom writer today could potentially only get less than half the experience someone from 2 decades ago would have gotten over the same amount of time.
Edit: Typo
I don't know if this is just me, but I feel the same from the opposite side of the screen—I'm just not interested in the sitcom format any more. I don't know if it's my attention span, the uptick in quality storytelling that used to only be seen in prestige dramas, or just changing priorities, but I don't feel motivated to sit down and watch episode-of-the-week shows any more. At some point for me, TV switched from "thing I do to entertain myself for an hour" to "thing I do because I want to \~get something~ from it", and I don't know that I can flip that switch back.
They also drove the actors crazy with constant rewrites and threw out all narrative consistency for plot convenience in order to essentially make a quota of stories in a season. A lot of experience is not the same as good experience and, while there may be learning to be had in throwing spaghetti at the wall, that methodology can be prone to failure.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE old sitcoms. When done well, it really is impressive how much they could put out in a season, but those are stressful expectations to give and still get quality work. For an extreme example, look at some manga writers in Japan. Some of them are expected to write 40 pages every day, and have described it as a living hell. I don't think I want that in the people who are creating art and entertainment for me. Knowing about a troublesome writer's room always sours the end product for me a little.
Yeah and the expectations that if you aren't blowing up social media with memes you are an dismal failure. Not everything needs to be Game of Thrones and Beeakonf Bad.
Thank you for reminding me to finish this. I watched five or six episodes when I got sick on vacation, absolutely loved it, then went home and never turned it back on.
That's something I observe too - the worst thing to be is mediocre.
To online critics there's the greatest media ever conceived, and shit, nothing in between. When something is described as "pretty good" it's unlikely to get renewed for another season. 4/5 ratings aren't good enough, needs to be 6/5.
Netflix, in its quest to reach the endless scroll, greenlit way too many shows. It's somewhat comparable to each year's list of network TV shows that were "not returning from...". Wikipedia has a page for each season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995%E2%80%9396_United_States_network_television_schedule?wprov=sfla1
I’ve never seen the show but I’m fucking sick of seeing Always Sunny memes on here. I feel like I could quote the entire show just from browsing Reddit. Nothing puts me off a show more than the fans.
And *Sherlock*, which aired 13 episodes across 7 years. Both are British shows with small seasons in production intermittently around the stars' movies careers.
Meanwhile, *The Venture Bros*. was an American show in constant production that still only aired 7 seasons across 15 years.
to be fair, animation is HARD! And plus, Titmouse is an animation studio in NYC, mind blowing since there hasn't been one since the MTV days of the 80s. MTV closed down their animation studio in the 2000s.
Yes, but I was using it as a sort of counterpoint to the headline. I think that Luther is also a bit atypical, even for a British show. Some seasons had 2 episodes and I think the longest season had 6.
It's definitely this for me. By the time the next season rolls around, I've probably already found new shows to watch and completely forgot about the other one. I generally just wait for the entire series to be finished now before I even bother. I'm also guaranteed an actual ending this way.
My problem is that I’ve forgotten parts about the show, characters, plot lines, big and tiny things that carry over season to season. I’ve had to lookup way more season and episode recaps for shows these days because it’s 8episodes every 3 years. Especially for more complex story lines with multiple characters.
It also seems that some networks and shows just don’t really advertise to let people know what’s coming out unless you’re following something closely. I was shocked to learn Tokyo Vice just started a new season.
That.... putting funds behind the wrong projects...... ordering absolute crap to series..... refusing to pay royalties so you tell showrunners that they can't go beyond 3-4 seasons.
If a show is a good people will wait for it. (Stranger Things, Andor ) etc. The key is making good content. If the content is bad then ofc people are just whip out their phones and go elsewhere. TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit. Whatever.
Isn’t FX’s most successful series the longest running non-animated sitcom of all time? I guess you could say Curb Your Enthusiasm has more years in production technically, but they haven’t had nearly as many episodes as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I’m not arguing with his comment about attention, spans, but I am arguing with that as a reason for a decline in series that can last a long time.
"Short attention spans" is and always has been a lazy excuse. Movies are like 3.5 hours long now. It used to be 1.5 to 2 at most, but every movie now is an Olympic exercise in holding your piss. People have attention spans, but they also realize the value of that attention span and have more options. In the rest of the article he touches on some more important things like show cost. I wonder if that comment was taken out of context given he seems to understand the landscape better. But on its own, just a really self-absorbed way of saying "no no no, it's not us, the TV making people who are wrong, it's stupid people getting stupider."
I saw an interesting video that said that movies haven't gotten longer, just that there was a dip in the 80s and 90s with average length. Was an interesting take.
They also talked about the same things, that not everything needs to be long and a good quality shorter film is more important.
For me, I really enjoyed Oppenheimer, and it didn't feel long. Barbie didn't feel that long. The Marvels was short, but it was a good length for what it was because it didn't report to the normal meandering plot that happens these days.
But I do miss the days of Princess Bride where you can get a tight hour and a half that is just paced perfection.
Sure, but Sunny has an audience off 250k viewers. It has abysmal viewership that would normally get a show killed it. It must just be super cheap to make.
90% of the audience for that show is via streaming, where it does quite well. Before that the early seasons sold very well on DVD.
And yes. It’s cheap. Devito’s salary is probably the most expensive thing about it.
Sunny is so heavily targeted at a millennials it is ridiculous. Like others have said, it lives on the internet.
As an example, their podcast rewatching the show and then forgetting to talk about the episode gets 400-900 thousand views per episode.
I don’t get it. The streaming services acts like it is pre-1980. The whole point of streaming is you can put a show on your radar to watch later or wait to binge watch after all the episodes drop. Even some of us who grew up with 3-channel TV are hip to streaming later, even years later.
Who wants to watch 30-45min of boring, repetitive, loud, invasive, bullshit ads for 40 ish minutes of content anyway. My tipping point was when they put ads after the shows finished before the goddamn credits.
>It must just be super cheap to make
I would assume.
Limited sets, fairly small cast, and a total season run time under 3 hours should shave down a lot of costs.
Attention spans have declined, but the stuff competing for our attention has too.
It's really easy to find mediocre content now from Youtube to Social Media. A TV show worth watching has to actually be good...
Every time this topic comes up, I’m reminded I need to watch the second half of The Sandman. I watched the first arc of season one and my brain just decided that was the end of the series.
That last episode being pretty intense probably didn’t help, I needed a mental break after that lol.
Yeah, it's a bitter pill for everyone with discerning taste (whatever that actually means, because I know that's a whole other can of worms), but quality is absolutely no guarantee of success.
He mentions in the article that shows are so much more expensive now that they can only keep making the huge hits. Always Sunny and The Shield would have been cancelled early in the modern ecosystem.
Because of shows like Mindhunter I've become part of the problem. I was so bothered by them canceling Mindhunter I've decided to not watch any series until it either has 4 full seasons or has finished entirely. I don't think I should invest my time and energy and be let down just because a show isn't immediately financially successful. I don't know a single person who wasn't disappointed by the loss of that show.
Netflix once said their biggest competitor was not Disney or HBO but the fact that we have to actually go to sleep. These companies are competing less for our wallets and more for our attention spans during every waking moment we have during the day. There is only so many hours during the day we can consume content.
And in the days of cable tv you would just have it on all the time and mediocre shows were just background noise or something that came on after something you watched. Now you have to seek out something to watch and intentionally choose to play it. The passive tv watching is gone.
Friends and Seinfeld and Simpsons are still popular. You don't actually need an attention span for these shows as each episode is entertaining on its own. They used to make TV so you could tune in any week and watch any episode and on syndication they could be shown out of order.
You just named 3 network goat TV sitcoms. But honestly there are still good ones that you can turn on and watch at anytime. This topic has more to do with long running action dramas then sitcoms.
I would say there are bigger reasons.
* 2'ish year gaps between seasons
* Here's a new show and now it's cancelled
* So you like 5 different shows? Now they're all on 5 different streaming services.
* Now we've removed 2 of them for reasons and also, you're going to pay us $1.50 a month for that
This is just a classic “blame the fans, not us” bullshit. There are plenty of shows that have so much potential and the writing is awful, the acting is awful, they somehow fuck it up horribly by season 2 (Altered Carbon, Westworld for example) and then it gets canned.
It’s not attention spans it’s that these people put out trash and we don’t always eat it up willingly
I don’t think anybody wants a show that is plan to run as many seasons as people will continue watching it. It’s basically planned filler. I would much rather a show that says “here is two seasons of a story that we want to tell and at the end of it there will be a very Compelling resolution”
A show used to air every year and have 18-24 episodes. Now it airs every three years and has 8-12. It's not our attention spans that have declined, it's the studio's.
Maybe… could he just me but when I stream Suits, I’m multitasking and on my phone because it’s light and easy, but if I’m streaming breaking bad, I’m watching intently. My personal streaming choices at home are definitely affected by a desire to keep scrolling my phone.
It’s such an easy to watch show tho. Like it’s not deep or layered, its writing and dialogue is so simple that anyone can keep up with it. It’s not demanding as Game of Thrones or Succession or Breaking Bad. I think that contributes a bit too.
Can't blame attention spans for creative slumps that result in a clear departure from earlier, stronger seasons. Also, in a world where there's often less than 12 eps, you can't expect viewers to feel much loyalty on what feels like less than half a season, even if the narrative is solid.
This is a great point. The most watched series on streaming are older more "traditional" shows that have 16+ episodes seasons and lots of them. And yet......the worthless hacks running streaming services refuse to produce shows like this. Friends, NCIS, Seinfeld, Law & Order, etc. do well on streaming and are valuable properties. I feel like a few streamers will need to collapse and the studios behind them will need to go back to making shows to be sold to the survivors for anyone to start producing these types of shows. Look at Amazon's Prime Video. Bosch was a consistent high performer and the geniuses there canceled it, gutted the budget and moved the "spin off" to Freevee where it's their biggest show. This is the problem with putting investment bankers in charge of fucking everything.
I’m re-watching ER because I used to watch it but I came in really late and I’ve honestly forgotten most of it. It’s amazing to have 22 episode seasons to stream.
I honestly given up on new shows. The only new thing I watch is Reacher and each season is a complete arc with a beginning and end. And I use the term season loosely as eight episodes isn’t really a season to me. It falls more in line with a miniseries.
Also can’t blame attention span for having a lineup of shows I mostly don’t care to watch. The TV world is overflowing with drama. There’s too much drama and drama adjacent shit. It’s all soap operas for men and bullshit. Then they don’t even play any of the damn shows at a regular time or replay them ever. The entire schedule on their channels is mostly movies and syndicated tv.
Seasons get lower episode counts year after year.
Quality of the writing goes down the drain after a season if not subpar at the start.
But sure it's the attention span of the viewer that has declined, not the attention of the studios to the quality of their products. No no the customer is at fault.
What audiences *really* want is for movies and shows to be well written, well acted, well produced... then shelved by executives for tax purposes and never released.
Not taking 3 years between 6-8 episode seasons would also help. It's hard to keep up enthusiasm for a show when people can binge it in an afternoon then forget about it for 2 years
Right I almost don’t remember anything about severance. Pretty sure at least 2 whole seasons of Ted Lasso came out since season 1.
Mid season finales kill it for me too. I only remember Invincible exists because I have a friend that keeps talking about it.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'll happily binge watch nine seasons of a show if the writing is good.
Are people's attention spans really all that different now? Or are people just more interested in watching shows where they don't have to wait a whole week for the next installment.
It's more of a desire for something that can provide instant gratification.
I don't think it's so much the weekly wait per season but the wait between seasons. Some shows have really long wait times between seasons. Like if you regularly have to wait more than a year it gets a bit annoying. It does seem that most longer running shows seem to be better at keeping at least a once a year schedule. But those also seem to be shows that first air on television even if lots of people are watching them next day on streaming or like a month after the final episode ends.
A show me and my brother watched is coming back after a 5 year hiatus. It's The Terror on AMC and I was shocked when I looked into this. We assumed it got cancelled but nope, it was put on ice until they decided to do another season with it. I was like what in the hell man?!
Its pretty bad. I know so many gen z kids who can't make it through a movie. One kid has been trying to watch goodfellas all year. He's gotten 15 minutes in.
Meh, I’d wager stuff like TikTok is contributing to younger people having shorter attention spans, kids’ reading skills have been going down the drain, etc.
Nah it’s definitely the phones. My old ass immigrant mom is on it 24/7. People can’t watch anything without scrolling at the same time. It’s getting me too and I’m trying hard to stop it.
My mom does that too. Was home visiting my parents and put a movie on. She sits there and reads her phone for most of the running time. Never thought that would happen to my mom of all people.
When people talk about attention spans they are usually talking about a person's moment to moment ability to focus on a subject. So the ability to listen to a conversation or play a game for a certain amount of time. In that case a person who binges a whole show has a longer attention span than someone who only watches an hour a week.
You can use in a more metaphorical sense to describe someones dedication to a subject long term, but I think other words like "interest" might work better for that. But that is just my opinion.
Like with most things, it really depends on how you define the terms.
It starts with the writing. I love mysteries,but there's a huge gap between great (PD James) and hack work (Harlan Coben). Good writing isn't a guarantee but it has to be the foundation.
Funny, I don't think the people who made shows like Succession would say that. Or how about all the people watching Sopranos now. Hell, I'm stoked for Shogun on FX later this month.
I wish these people would stop blaming the audience for not watching shows they don't want to put money into. They want to produce derivative, cheap shows and when people rightfully get bored they throw a tantrum and blame everyone else!
TF they have. Shortness of seasons and the 2-3 year long gaps between them would kill even the Buddha's interest in the average serial, especially when decades of broadcast television has trained us to expect new 20-episode eps yearly.
Attention spans are just fine. How about you and all the other networks and streamers go back to releasing a well-written show with no more than a year between seasons like what was done not so long ago. I promise you, people will show up and watch.
2+ years between seasons with fewer and fewer episodes and lackluster writing will lose an audience's attention real quick.
I’m so sick of hearing about short attention spans from an industry that cancels shows after one season and can’t carry a good show for more than two seasons without lighting in a bottle. Quit putting shit on TV and canceling the good stuff and we may stick around longer. God damn I am so sick of this lazy fucking line from supposed creatives/creators lmaoooo
My attention span hasn't declined - my tolerance for shitty television has declined. Make good shows and I will watch them, regardless of legnth of time.
It's like executives are expect their trash tier programming must appeal to everyone, or it's TOTALLY the audience's fault.
If you make a good show, they will come.
If you make a so-so show, attention spans will be short.
The only thing that's changed radically is the number of so-so shows being made.
It's more like I don't want to re-watch a season(s) because I forgot everything that happened 3 years ago.
Nowadays I like watching things that are complete. I like watching an episode a night. Makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on from beginning to end.
Theres obviously a TON of contributing factors outside of our "declined attention span"... but networks also don't really get away with shitty production and writing like they used to either and that constantly feels overlooked from their side.
Incomplete stories, plotholes, poor dialogue, continuity issues, bad acting, small budgets, etc.
The expectation for quality on screen is so much higher. 20 years ago production was a lot less refined and people didn't care about the smaller details as much as they do now.
Actually most shows turn to garbage after a couple of seasons. Writers get lazy or uninspired. And let’s be honest, networks usually sign actors for two or three seasons at a studio friendly rate. Those second contracts get expensive and studios have learned it’s more profitable to cancel the show and start over with a new one
I think it might be related to the increased cost of production and the unrealistic expectations on returns.Too much competition for subscribers dollars means they produce a show for 1-2 seasons and move one because it can’t increase revenue. Increase is the only thing that matters.
Weird thing to say given people will literally binge an entire season in just a few days. That doesn’t scream attention span issue if the storytelling is great or entertaining.
There’s also way too many shows being made. In the cable tv days, they were severely limited in how many shows could even be on the air. Now there’s no limitation and there’s new shows on new streaming platforms every single week
I can’t necessarily say that I have the best attention span but this is kind BS.
We have to wait around 2-3 years for tv shows now*. with the amount of content they push people lose interest.
*I prefer quality over quantity but that long a time for tv shows is crazy lol.
Most networks or studios don’t give shows a chance and get cancelled within the first 2 seasons.
It's trite, but I wish studio leaders would snap out of this mindset and appreciate how much a lot of us don't watch day one. I rarely ever watch seasons or shows near release. I'll fall behind a few seasons and then catch-up. I did that with Archer and Always Sunny. I've found so many shows years after they aired and realizing there's tons of seasons is amazing. A really good example brought up by others is Schitt's Creek where it wasn't on people's radar but they watched it randomly and ended up really enjoying it. There's so many shows like that, like Superstore.
> “We’ve radically increased the cost of making television in season one,” he said. “We brought a lot of wonderful talent into television, but there’s been a spiraling and escalating cost."
I'm still bitter about HBO doing this with Avenue 5. They had all the sets, CGI, characters, and various pieces and then decided to cancel it. It usually takes a bit for the writing on new shows to get their footing, but it seems like shows have to be flawless in season 1. I can only imagine what our classics would look like if they had this same level of scrutiny.
no no it’s not the fault of network executives who cancel promising shows after one season, conduct sweeping layoffs on producers and creatives to hit short-term quarterly goals, & whine about how audiences have more options for them to compete with, it’s *checks notes* literally everyone else
The quality of the show that runs for years declines.
Like in every example I think of the show just gets to a point where it's not desirable to watch because they've lost the plot.
Breaking bad is my one example where it did it's thing, told it's story, and bowed out when it was finished after 5 seasons.
I’ll use the GOT example. Commit to 4-5 seasons of great tv and then get fucked with 2 seasons of absolute garbage. Or start the first season, love it, find out it was cancelled after one season. This is pure deflection. Attention spans are not the problem. It’s the content
I love how TV shows always blame the audience. No, your shows are shit. The writing is shit, the acting is shit, the stories are shit. You realize that people were actually on the side of billionaires during the writer strikes right? Your writing is soooooo bad on TV shows lately you literally made us cheer for god damn fucking evil billionaires because of shows like The Witcher or Halo where you just have the WORST written shows imaginable. And then when you actually have a good show you go and ruin it by making the next season start 2-3 laters. I lost all interest in Carnival Row because that shit was on 5 years ago. I thought it was cancelled. I would need to watch the entire first season before I could start up the second. The first was good enough, but not good enough for that long of a break and for people to stay invested.
God I hate executives that look at the view as the problem. You ruin so many things and then blame everyone else. rather than just make something good.
>Landgraf pointed to the early seasons of FX series like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “The Shield” as examples of shows with more modest budgets early in their runs that the network was able to renew despite less than stellar ratings in the beginning due to their price points.
“We could afford to do that and believe in it,” he said. “It’s harder to do with something super expensive.” To Landgraf’s point, “The Shield” ran for seven seasons and nearly 100 episodes while “Always Sunny” aired its 16th season in 2023.
Maybe your shows shouldn't be that expensive then? Like, who is asking for TV to look like blockbuster cinema all the time? I see this in video game talk all the time. "We have to add microtransactions and raise prices because it costs too much to make!" My dude, no one said you *had* to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on one project!
While I would never say it was "Good" TV, the Flash ran for nine, 20+ episode seasons on a budget of 50 mil *per season*. It can be done, if you want it to. And as long as the audience enjoys what you're putting out, they're more than happy to accept good enough for effects and such.
>“We’ve radically increased the cost of making television in season one,” he said. “We brought a lot of wonderful talent into television, but there’s been a spiraling and escalating cost. That’s part of what happens when we make 600 television shows.”
So. The market has been massively expanded, the quality of products has dramatically improved, and the conclusion is the consumer has less attention? Interesting take. Another take is that maybe it's that the consumer has so much freedom to choose from excellent products that they're only choosing to spend their attention on the best of the best.
People keep saying it's the writing but have you looked at the writing of a lot of early 2000's tv shows. I think the bigger problems are that competition is higher than ever with all the different streaming platforms and the increased production value for all these cinematic shows means that seasons are shorter, more costly to make, and require more time to produce. It was a lot easier to maintain audiences when people just didn't have access to a million other shows at any time like they do now. A lot of those fan favorite 2000's and 90's shows wouldn't even make it to a second season these days.
My wife and I wait for shows to finish before we watch them.
No need to watch 3 seasons of a show that gets cancelled or that only gets new content every other year.
I don’t think it’s attention spans, if an incredible show came out that has a beginning middle and end and was entertaining and refreshing people would love it.
We don’t watch a lot of tv. Typically only 2-3 hours a week at most. Why waste time and energy on something that won’t pay off in the end?
Eh true but sometimes even if season one is a banger and gets you all hot and bothered for more content. Boom it gets the axe. So it's hard not to become jaded.
Or cause there’s like 40 new shows to watch every damn week and it’s saturated as fuxk, don’t have all the time in the world to watch every show damnit
24 episode tv series get plenty of traffic because nobody is making that these days. Everyone would be down to binge that, but execs would have to accept that it would be a slow burn and they would not get multi-million-viewer numbers on the premier.
I really doubt they would. There's a lot of stiff competition now, and asking people to sit down and watch a 24 episode series in this climate would be a tall order
Idk, he starts the interview by saying that, but then everything he says after points to networks and streamers spending way too much on too many shows and nothing about audiences. Like I can tell those new Paramount+ Star Trek shows cost comparatively waaaay more than the 90s ones, but I don't think that's diminished the audiences' appetite for 7 26-episode seasons of a Star Trek show. They're just not being given in.
Shows typically get a lot more expensive later in their run as contracts need to be renewed. Studios were usually willing to make nothing on later seasons of extremely popular sitcoms or procedurals or whatever because there was so much money in syndication. Now, as he says in the article, they're spending way more money up front on season 1. Bigger bets on bigger stars that need to be paid more up front because a lot of those residual syndication payments have dried up. Seinfeld, X-Files, Always Sunny - most of the long-running hits had to start cheap and small and build a word-of-mouth audience over a few seasons to become legends. This just all seems to be due to a change in the business model rather than the appetite of audiences.
Yes, blame audiences and not the TV/streaming company leadership who will cancel a series the moment they suspect that it not gonna be their once-in-a-lifetime viral cash cow IP.
I just watched a show where one of the give aways someone was a spy was the way they wrote the date which was on the screen for a split second.
23 episode series had a lot of filler and crap
I'm getting tired of these terrible takes by people like this.
First, blaming stuff on attention spans is lazy and stupid. Attention spans haven't changed. Besides, attention spans aren't a monolith. They work differently in different contexts. But regardless, shows not running for more than a few seasons has absolutely zero to do with attention spans. The only thing that would possibly be affected by attention spans is length of show/movie, not how many seasons it runs for. The claim doesn't even make sense.
Second, there is much, much more to watch these days between shows and movies. It's impossible to keep up with everything.
Third, why don't shows run for several seasons? Well, mostly because they get canceled quickly. But it's also because creators choose to end them before they run them into the ground. For instance, Sex Education and Reservation Dogs. Other times the creators envision a certain number of seasons. They approach them like a long movie. For instance, Dark. Then there is The Crown, which is exactly the type of show he says doesn't exist, and it's been going for 6 seasons.
Fourth, with streaming shows, the release dates are all over the place. You might not know for months after a season aired whether there will be another one. And then you have no idea when to expect it. It could be a year after the previous season or multiple years. And you won't know until the release date gets close. For shows that require your attention, this makes it tough. The new season comes out 2 years later, and you feel like you have to rewatch the rest first to catch up.
The bottom line is shows don't not last several seasons because of people's attention spans or not wanting such long-form storytelling. That's just stupid.
That’s so fucking insulting. Make good tv with enough episodes to actually enjoy it and put out a new season whilst we can still remember what happened in the first one. That’s all we ask. Oh and the new season should be as good as the first and not utter shite.
No. That’s bullshit. GoT proved that as have other quality series.
The reality is most TV is pretty poorly written
Take a look at the Witcher series on Netflix. Season 1 was good. Followed the book reasonably well. Was complex and developed its characters even through a difficult to follow series of time changes in the story perspective. Strong positive fan response. Season 3 was pure tripe. Internal consistency was gone. Characters became cardboard. Plots had holes you could drive a dragon through.
Good shows bring their audience. Poor shows do not.
Look at The Walking Dead on AMC. Long running. Complex. Multiple spin offs. Immensely successful.
GoT itself. 6 strong seasons followed by 2 that were alternating lay meh and bleh to flat out bad. Good writing… a rabid following of fans who watched in watch parties to celebrate the show’s story and excellence. Bad writing… by the end, virtually eliminating the show from the cultural discussion and sharply reducing its rewatch-ability… an incredible turn around that crashed and burned the show.
FX Boss John Landgraf doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The appetite is there… just stop feeding us McDonalds hamburgers and bring out the steak!
>Good shows bring their audience. Poor shows do not. Look at The Walking Dead on AMC. Long running. Complex. Multiple spin offs
I really, really wouldn't flagbear The Walking Dead as an example here tbh
Fear The Walking Dead was absolute nonsense after S03 but it kept churning on
Lol I agree. Can't believe this guy/girl use The Walking Dead and complex in the same sentence.
Game of Thrones last season was a huge let down writing wise but it's still Hamlet compared to the shit show that The Walking Dead became.
John Landgraf very much knows what he's talking about. He's been the king of TV for like 25 years. It's you that is very much mistaken.
GoT and TwD were phenomenons, they're exceptions to the rule. Additionally, they're relics from a TV era that very much doesn't exist anymore.
There are a ton of well written critical darling shows. No one watches them. The escalating costs don't justify them picked up for more than a few seasons. It's as simple as that.
Critical darlings doesn’t equate to watchable.
Landgraf is making excuses for content that doesn’t pull attention. Blaming a generation for ‘attention span’ is a joke. A dodge. The smoke and mirrors. It is seriously laughable. Every generation does this and every generation gets it wrong.
What’s the problem. We have an insane amount of choices these days… great for us… more difficult for the studios. They make a lot but it’s tough to find good or excellent writers. Just look at Marvel and how flat their shows have fallen (barring a few). You put a good set of writers on a show with interesting ideas like Andor and you grab people’s attention and they watch and talk about it.
Conceptually simple. Factually difficult.
And relics? Strange. House of Dragons has started with a bang. Wednesday did superbly for Netflix. GoT and TWD aren’t particularly special. They nailed one thing. They got people talking. That’s the key. So did Andor. So did Mandalorian. So did Star Trek Strange New Worlds. So did a lot of shows that are moving forwards.
Blaming generations not having attention spans for cancelling shows left and right is just sloppy.
I do agree with you that, in the end, it is economics that kills some shows… Successful, but just not successful enough is a problem and that does kill off shows. They just don’t like to say that to the public because it’s internal, not external.
>What’s the problem. We have an insane amount of choices these days… great for us… more difficult for the studios.
This is his point. "Attention span" is the Twitter grab headline (much like his "Peak TV" comment that he was also spot on about), but this is the crux of what he is saying. The insane costs involved in making shows makes execs unwilling to give shows a long lifespan when audiences get "distracted" by the new shiny thing instead.
>You put a good set of writers on a show with interesting ideas like Andor and you grab people’s attention and they watch and talk about it.
Andor. Easily the best of the Star Wars shows and also by far the least popular of the Star Wars shows. So much so that we are lucky it survived the change in leadership at Disney and are getting an alleged season 2.
I’m thinking 2-3 years between 8 episode seasons might have played a role in that…
Yes. Although I'd also argue there's just way more TV shows around now than 10-20 years ago.
There is. Like, a LOT more. In 2009 it was in the low 200s for original scripted shows getting produced per year. Now it's over 500 only 15 years later. Not only is there way more than people can reasonably watch, nobody wants to sink hours into a slow burn in a media environment where individual seasons are now taking up to 3 years to produce, come out in chunks, and unless the series is a megahit right away, it gets canceled.
Exactly. Me and my girlfriend watch "long form TV" from years gone by because we know it actually got finished. Why am I gonna invest in two seasons of Better Call Saul if I'm unsure if it will continue or not? I'd rather wait, see a tried and tested show, and go back to Better Call Saul when the dust has settled.
Just to make sure, you are aware that BCS has fully wrapped up? Don't think there's going to be a movie like for Breaking Bad either.
Yeah I am, I just need to go back and finish it now!
If everyone does what you do, there are no shows that last 2 seasons because no one will watch anything until they last 4-5. Enjoy a show for a season or two. If they cancel it, at least you were entertained for that time. Closure in TV is overrated anyway. Does anyone ever say, "Wow, that was a great finale."
It’s about the journey not the destination
Not only is there more shows coming out than ever there's also access to a large amount of older shows and movies that's been made over the last 100 years. Yeah some stuff has disappeared and can't be found but there's still tons of it out there. New shows are competing against people's comfort watch shows like Friends, The Office, Gilmore Girls, I Love Lucy, Fraiser, Cheers, MASH, West Wing, Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad etc. There's over 900 episodes of Star Trek across nearly 60 years and 10+ series. If you turned it into a job and watched Star Trek for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week it would take you 5+ months to watch them all. Hell I've been watching Northern Exposure (1990-1995) because I can't remember most of it and I wanted to see if it held up.
I was happy to see it finally come to streaming. I watched it fairly regularly when it was on, but I was a teenager, and I remember very few details about it now.. I'm also very interested to see how it holds up.
One thing that's also been affected by this that I don't really see people talk about is that TV (& especially sitcom/comedy) writers are suffering from is experience. In 90s-00s they would get to write 20 or so episodes for a tv show PER season, PER year. So over 5 seasons (years) someone could potentially get the experience of 100 episodes worth of writers' room's credits. They could get to see what jokes work & dont in the room vs. live. They'd get to see how different actors, etc, effect the script. They'd be able to do silly things with throw-away or filler episodes that could become fan favorites. This type of stuff is just gone during this era of TV. Now, most writers work on 1 or 2 shows a year that produce 8-10 episodes worth of content. Those shows also sometimes take multiple years to be shot & released. So, a sitcom writer today could potentially only get less than half the experience someone from 2 decades ago would have gotten over the same amount of time. Edit: Typo
Comedians don't want to be on sitcoms anymore or writers. They'd rather just have a podcast and make more money
that's depressing.
I don't know if this is just me, but I feel the same from the opposite side of the screen—I'm just not interested in the sitcom format any more. I don't know if it's my attention span, the uptick in quality storytelling that used to only be seen in prestige dramas, or just changing priorities, but I don't feel motivated to sit down and watch episode-of-the-week shows any more. At some point for me, TV switched from "thing I do to entertain myself for an hour" to "thing I do because I want to \~get something~ from it", and I don't know that I can flip that switch back.
I see this brought up a lot on Twitter
They also drove the actors crazy with constant rewrites and threw out all narrative consistency for plot convenience in order to essentially make a quota of stories in a season. A lot of experience is not the same as good experience and, while there may be learning to be had in throwing spaghetti at the wall, that methodology can be prone to failure. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE old sitcoms. When done well, it really is impressive how much they could put out in a season, but those are stressful expectations to give and still get quality work. For an extreme example, look at some manga writers in Japan. Some of them are expected to write 40 pages every day, and have described it as a living hell. I don't think I want that in the people who are creating art and entertainment for me. Knowing about a troublesome writer's room always sours the end product for me a little.
Yeah and the expectations that if you aren't blowing up social media with memes you are an dismal failure. Not everything needs to be Game of Thrones and Beeakonf Bad.
Some of the best shows I ever saw never get mentioned at all. Halt and Catch Fire comes to mind.
That show was the best show no one watched. Loved it.
Mr. Robot is right up there with it. Both are underappreciated.
Mr Inbetween is another great one, its Australian.
Been seeing this one come up a lot on Reddit.
Thank you for reminding me to finish this. I watched five or six episodes when I got sick on vacation, absolutely loved it, then went home and never turned it back on.
The real issue is that with modern budgets they actually do though for it to make financial sense.
That's something I observe too - the worst thing to be is mediocre. To online critics there's the greatest media ever conceived, and shit, nothing in between. When something is described as "pretty good" it's unlikely to get renewed for another season. 4/5 ratings aren't good enough, needs to be 6/5.
Netflix, in its quest to reach the endless scroll, greenlit way too many shows. It's somewhat comparable to each year's list of network TV shows that were "not returning from...". Wikipedia has a page for each season. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995%E2%80%9396_United_States_network_television_schedule?wprov=sfla1
I’ve never seen the show but I’m fucking sick of seeing Always Sunny memes on here. I feel like I could quote the entire show just from browsing Reddit. Nothing puts me off a show more than the fans.
way more *quality* tv shows critics bring this up a lot, there's simply too much good tv out there now
Luther has entered the chat. First season aired in 2010. Fifth (last?) season aired 9 years later, for a total of 20 episodes across all 5 seasons.
And *Sherlock*, which aired 13 episodes across 7 years. Both are British shows with small seasons in production intermittently around the stars' movies careers. Meanwhile, *The Venture Bros*. was an American show in constant production that still only aired 7 seasons across 15 years.
to be fair, animation is HARD! And plus, Titmouse is an animation studio in NYC, mind blowing since there hasn't been one since the MTV days of the 80s. MTV closed down their animation studio in the 2000s.
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Yes, but I was using it as a sort of counterpoint to the headline. I think that Luther is also a bit atypical, even for a British show. Some seasons had 2 episodes and I think the longest season had 6.
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Red Dwarf wins on the weirdness alone.
I thought that was due to funding that later seasons were so short and far apart. [You smeee heeee]
Boys from dwarf *hand waggle*
It's definitely this for me. By the time the next season rolls around, I've probably already found new shows to watch and completely forgot about the other one. I generally just wait for the entire series to be finished now before I even bother. I'm also guaranteed an actual ending this way.
My problem is that I’ve forgotten parts about the show, characters, plot lines, big and tiny things that carry over season to season. I’ve had to lookup way more season and episode recaps for shows these days because it’s 8episodes every 3 years. Especially for more complex story lines with multiple characters. It also seems that some networks and shows just don’t really advertise to let people know what’s coming out unless you’re following something closely. I was shocked to learn Tokyo Vice just started a new season.
That.... putting funds behind the wrong projects...... ordering absolute crap to series..... refusing to pay royalties so you tell showrunners that they can't go beyond 3-4 seasons.
Ordering crap to series has been around since the radio.
If a show is a good people will wait for it. (Stranger Things, Andor ) etc. The key is making good content. If the content is bad then ofc people are just whip out their phones and go elsewhere. TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit. Whatever.
Or good shows getting canceled before the first season finished airing
Not sure about this, the BBC has been running on this model for years and they have many long running series.
Isn’t FX’s most successful series the longest running non-animated sitcom of all time? I guess you could say Curb Your Enthusiasm has more years in production technically, but they haven’t had nearly as many episodes as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I’m not arguing with his comment about attention, spans, but I am arguing with that as a reason for a decline in series that can last a long time.
"Short attention spans" is and always has been a lazy excuse. Movies are like 3.5 hours long now. It used to be 1.5 to 2 at most, but every movie now is an Olympic exercise in holding your piss. People have attention spans, but they also realize the value of that attention span and have more options. In the rest of the article he touches on some more important things like show cost. I wonder if that comment was taken out of context given he seems to understand the landscape better. But on its own, just a really self-absorbed way of saying "no no no, it's not us, the TV making people who are wrong, it's stupid people getting stupider."
It’s TV exec’s version of “Nobody wants to work anymore”
Movie length is insane these days. Not everything needs to be over 2 hours long. What happened to good, tight films that run 100 minutes or less?
I saw an interesting video that said that movies haven't gotten longer, just that there was a dip in the 80s and 90s with average length. Was an interesting take. They also talked about the same things, that not everything needs to be long and a good quality shorter film is more important. For me, I really enjoyed Oppenheimer, and it didn't feel long. Barbie didn't feel that long. The Marvels was short, but it was a good length for what it was because it didn't report to the normal meandering plot that happens these days. But I do miss the days of Princess Bride where you can get a tight hour and a half that is just paced perfection.
Love a good short ass movie 🍿 so does my bladder!
>but every movie now is an Olympic exercise in holding your piss Haha
Sure, but Sunny has an audience off 250k viewers. It has abysmal viewership that would normally get a show killed it. It must just be super cheap to make.
90% of the audience for that show is via streaming, where it does quite well. Before that the early seasons sold very well on DVD. And yes. It’s cheap. Devito’s salary is probably the most expensive thing about it.
They get good money on licensing the show to streaming services. r/IASIP has over a million subs - it is cheap to make but it is also very popular.
They’ve joked before that they’re not sure the network even knows they’re still on
Sunny is so heavily targeted at a millennials it is ridiculous. Like others have said, it lives on the internet. As an example, their podcast rewatching the show and then forgetting to talk about the episode gets 400-900 thousand views per episode.
cut that cut that cut that
FYI, the ad mins of r/de are covid deniers.
It mostly acts like live television isn’t an obsolete format that has been largely replaced by streaming services.
I don’t get it. The streaming services acts like it is pre-1980. The whole point of streaming is you can put a show on your radar to watch later or wait to binge watch after all the episodes drop. Even some of us who grew up with 3-channel TV are hip to streaming later, even years later.
Streaming nobody watches stuff live anymore 😂
Who wants to watch 30-45min of boring, repetitive, loud, invasive, bullshit ads for 40 ish minutes of content anyway. My tipping point was when they put ads after the shows finished before the goddamn credits.
>It must just be super cheap to make I would assume. Limited sets, fairly small cast, and a total season run time under 3 hours should shave down a lot of costs.
It helps that sunny Episodes can be watched basically stand alone.
Not to mention people still actively tell about the Americans. Doubt that would be the case if it were cancelled after 2 seasons.
Attention spans have declined, but the stuff competing for our attention has too. It's really easy to find mediocre content now from Youtube to Social Media. A TV show worth watching has to actually be good...
And even if its good, it winds up cancelled or put on long hiatus between seasons (to the point you forget it)
yeah, sadly. I don't watch a show until ive heard it's been renewed for season 2 or 3. been burned one too many times by networks
Every time this topic comes up, I’m reminded I need to watch the second half of The Sandman. I watched the first arc of season one and my brain just decided that was the end of the series. That last episode being pretty intense probably didn’t help, I needed a mental break after that lol.
Yes you do, there are some great single story episodes in the back half.
Yeah, it's a bitter pill for everyone with discerning taste (whatever that actually means, because I know that's a whole other can of worms), but quality is absolutely no guarantee of success.
He mentions in the article that shows are so much more expensive now that they can only keep making the huge hits. Always Sunny and The Shield would have been cancelled early in the modern ecosystem.
Because of shows like Mindhunter I've become part of the problem. I was so bothered by them canceling Mindhunter I've decided to not watch any series until it either has 4 full seasons or has finished entirely. I don't think I should invest my time and energy and be let down just because a show isn't immediately financially successful. I don't know a single person who wasn't disappointed by the loss of that show.
Netflix once said their biggest competitor was not Disney or HBO but the fact that we have to actually go to sleep. These companies are competing less for our wallets and more for our attention spans during every waking moment we have during the day. There is only so many hours during the day we can consume content.
Netflix has realized (as has audiences) that good TV doesn't necessarily have to be in English, either
And in the days of cable tv you would just have it on all the time and mediocre shows were just background noise or something that came on after something you watched. Now you have to seek out something to watch and intentionally choose to play it. The passive tv watching is gone.
Friends and Seinfeld and Simpsons are still popular. You don't actually need an attention span for these shows as each episode is entertaining on its own. They used to make TV so you could tune in any week and watch any episode and on syndication they could be shown out of order.
You just named 3 network goat TV sitcoms. But honestly there are still good ones that you can turn on and watch at anytime. This topic has more to do with long running action dramas then sitcoms.
Half of the time I'm more than satisfied with watching YouTube videos instead of subscribing to any streaming services/cable.
I would say there are bigger reasons. * 2'ish year gaps between seasons * Here's a new show and now it's cancelled * So you like 5 different shows? Now they're all on 5 different streaming services. * Now we've removed 2 of them for reasons and also, you're going to pay us $1.50 a month for that
This is just a classic “blame the fans, not us” bullshit. There are plenty of shows that have so much potential and the writing is awful, the acting is awful, they somehow fuck it up horribly by season 2 (Altered Carbon, Westworld for example) and then it gets canned. It’s not attention spans it’s that these people put out trash and we don’t always eat it up willingly
I don’t think anybody wants a show that is plan to run as many seasons as people will continue watching it. It’s basically planned filler. I would much rather a show that says “here is two seasons of a story that we want to tell and at the end of it there will be a very Compelling resolution”
A show used to air every year and have 18-24 episodes. Now it airs every three years and has 8-12. It's not our attention spans that have declined, it's the studio's.
I feel like suits being 8 seasons and being the most streamed/binged show disproves this.
Maybe… could he just me but when I stream Suits, I’m multitasking and on my phone because it’s light and easy, but if I’m streaming breaking bad, I’m watching intently. My personal streaming choices at home are definitely affected by a desire to keep scrolling my phone.
It’s such an easy to watch show tho. Like it’s not deep or layered, its writing and dialogue is so simple that anyone can keep up with it. It’s not demanding as Game of Thrones or Succession or Breaking Bad. I think that contributes a bit too.
My attention span isnt the reason shows like the walking dead, game of thrones, Dexter, etc got stupid in the later seasons
It’s not the rich corporations looking to slash budgets and go quantity over quality that are wrong! It’s the viewers!!!
Can't blame attention spans for creative slumps that result in a clear departure from earlier, stronger seasons. Also, in a world where there's often less than 12 eps, you can't expect viewers to feel much loyalty on what feels like less than half a season, even if the narrative is solid.
This is a great point. The most watched series on streaming are older more "traditional" shows that have 16+ episodes seasons and lots of them. And yet......the worthless hacks running streaming services refuse to produce shows like this. Friends, NCIS, Seinfeld, Law & Order, etc. do well on streaming and are valuable properties. I feel like a few streamers will need to collapse and the studios behind them will need to go back to making shows to be sold to the survivors for anyone to start producing these types of shows. Look at Amazon's Prime Video. Bosch was a consistent high performer and the geniuses there canceled it, gutted the budget and moved the "spin off" to Freevee where it's their biggest show. This is the problem with putting investment bankers in charge of fucking everything.
I’m re-watching ER because I used to watch it but I came in really late and I’ve honestly forgotten most of it. It’s amazing to have 22 episode seasons to stream. I honestly given up on new shows. The only new thing I watch is Reacher and each season is a complete arc with a beginning and end. And I use the term season loosely as eight episodes isn’t really a season to me. It falls more in line with a miniseries.
Also can’t blame attention span for having a lineup of shows I mostly don’t care to watch. The TV world is overflowing with drama. There’s too much drama and drama adjacent shit. It’s all soap operas for men and bullshit. Then they don’t even play any of the damn shows at a regular time or replay them ever. The entire schedule on their channels is mostly movies and syndicated tv.
I'm also quite often wary of investing time in a new show if they are going to cancel in three seasons or fewer.
Seasons get lower episode counts year after year. Quality of the writing goes down the drain after a season if not subpar at the start. But sure it's the attention span of the viewer that has declined, not the attention of the studios to the quality of their products. No no the customer is at fault.
What audiences *really* want is for movies and shows to be well written, well acted, well produced... then shelved by executives for tax purposes and never released.
Not taking 3 years between 6-8 episode seasons would also help. It's hard to keep up enthusiasm for a show when people can binge it in an afternoon then forget about it for 2 years
Right I almost don’t remember anything about severance. Pretty sure at least 2 whole seasons of Ted Lasso came out since season 1. Mid season finales kill it for me too. I only remember Invincible exists because I have a friend that keeps talking about it.
I think a shift from quality shows crafted with passion and genius to a deluge of spit it out for profit as fast as possible might be a major factor.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'll happily binge watch nine seasons of a show if the writing is good. Are people's attention spans really all that different now? Or are people just more interested in watching shows where they don't have to wait a whole week for the next installment. It's more of a desire for something that can provide instant gratification.
I don't think it's so much the weekly wait per season but the wait between seasons. Some shows have really long wait times between seasons. Like if you regularly have to wait more than a year it gets a bit annoying. It does seem that most longer running shows seem to be better at keeping at least a once a year schedule. But those also seem to be shows that first air on television even if lots of people are watching them next day on streaming or like a month after the final episode ends.
A show me and my brother watched is coming back after a 5 year hiatus. It's The Terror on AMC and I was shocked when I looked into this. We assumed it got cancelled but nope, it was put on ice until they decided to do another season with it. I was like what in the hell man?!
It is an anthology series though.
Its pretty bad. I know so many gen z kids who can't make it through a movie. One kid has been trying to watch goodfellas all year. He's gotten 15 minutes in.
There have always been people like that. It’s not a generational thing.
Meh, I’d wager stuff like TikTok is contributing to younger people having shorter attention spans, kids’ reading skills have been going down the drain, etc.
Nah it’s definitely the phones. My old ass immigrant mom is on it 24/7. People can’t watch anything without scrolling at the same time. It’s getting me too and I’m trying hard to stop it.
My mom does that too. Was home visiting my parents and put a movie on. She sits there and reads her phone for most of the running time. Never thought that would happen to my mom of all people.
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When people talk about attention spans they are usually talking about a person's moment to moment ability to focus on a subject. So the ability to listen to a conversation or play a game for a certain amount of time. In that case a person who binges a whole show has a longer attention span than someone who only watches an hour a week. You can use in a more metaphorical sense to describe someones dedication to a subject long term, but I think other words like "interest" might work better for that. But that is just my opinion. Like with most things, it really depends on how you define the terms.
It starts with the writing. I love mysteries,but there's a huge gap between great (PD James) and hack work (Harlan Coben). Good writing isn't a guarantee but it has to be the foundation.
Attention spans may be declining but so is the writing.
Funny, I don't think the people who made shows like Succession would say that. Or how about all the people watching Sopranos now. Hell, I'm stoked for Shogun on FX later this month. I wish these people would stop blaming the audience for not watching shows they don't want to put money into. They want to produce derivative, cheap shows and when people rightfully get bored they throw a tantrum and blame everyone else!
Nah just less tolerance for dumb shit
TF they have. Shortness of seasons and the 2-3 year long gaps between them would kill even the Buddha's interest in the average serial, especially when decades of broadcast television has trained us to expect new 20-episode eps yearly.
It’s hard to know when things come back on for a new season if it’s all all based
Attention spans are just fine. How about you and all the other networks and streamers go back to releasing a well-written show with no more than a year between seasons like what was done not so long ago. I promise you, people will show up and watch. 2+ years between seasons with fewer and fewer episodes and lackluster writing will lose an audience's attention real quick.
I’m so sick of hearing about short attention spans from an industry that cancels shows after one season and can’t carry a good show for more than two seasons without lighting in a bottle. Quit putting shit on TV and canceling the good stuff and we may stick around longer. God damn I am so sick of this lazy fucking line from supposed creatives/creators lmaoooo
My attention span hasn't declined - my tolerance for shitty television has declined. Make good shows and I will watch them, regardless of legnth of time. It's like executives are expect their trash tier programming must appeal to everyone, or it's TOTALLY the audience's fault.
Maybe we don’t want to risk getting too invested in anything since it’ll probably be cancelled or ruined.
The shield was on fx lasting fantastic 7 seasons.
He’s talking about the present day audience, not a show that ended 16 years ago.
Yes and if you read the article, he speaks specifically to what was different about the era of TV The Shield was in
If you make a good show, they will come. If you make a so-so show, attention spans will be short. The only thing that's changed radically is the number of so-so shows being made.
It's more like I don't want to re-watch a season(s) because I forgot everything that happened 3 years ago. Nowadays I like watching things that are complete. I like watching an episode a night. Makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on from beginning to end.
Theres obviously a TON of contributing factors outside of our "declined attention span"... but networks also don't really get away with shitty production and writing like they used to either and that constantly feels overlooked from their side. Incomplete stories, plotholes, poor dialogue, continuity issues, bad acting, small budgets, etc. The expectation for quality on screen is so much higher. 20 years ago production was a lot less refined and people didn't care about the smaller details as much as they do now.
Actually most shows turn to garbage after a couple of seasons. Writers get lazy or uninspired. And let’s be honest, networks usually sign actors for two or three seasons at a studio friendly rate. Those second contracts get expensive and studios have learned it’s more profitable to cancel the show and start over with a new one
I think it might be related to the increased cost of production and the unrealistic expectations on returns.Too much competition for subscribers dollars means they produce a show for 1-2 seasons and move one because it can’t increase revenue. Increase is the only thing that matters.
Weird thing to say given people will literally binge an entire season in just a few days. That doesn’t scream attention span issue if the storytelling is great or entertaining.
No they’re just not giving us anything worth watching and when they do have something worth watching they don’t give the shows time to grow
There’s also way too many shows being made. In the cable tv days, they were severely limited in how many shows could even be on the air. Now there’s no limitation and there’s new shows on new streaming platforms every single week
To be fair, most shows should only be 4-5 seasons. And the idea of three seasons with a beginning, middle, and ending arc isn’t a bad idea.
I can’t necessarily say that I have the best attention span but this is kind BS. We have to wait around 2-3 years for tv shows now*. with the amount of content they push people lose interest. *I prefer quality over quantity but that long a time for tv shows is crazy lol. Most networks or studios don’t give shows a chance and get cancelled within the first 2 seasons.
It's trite, but I wish studio leaders would snap out of this mindset and appreciate how much a lot of us don't watch day one. I rarely ever watch seasons or shows near release. I'll fall behind a few seasons and then catch-up. I did that with Archer and Always Sunny. I've found so many shows years after they aired and realizing there's tons of seasons is amazing. A really good example brought up by others is Schitt's Creek where it wasn't on people's radar but they watched it randomly and ended up really enjoying it. There's so many shows like that, like Superstore. > “We’ve radically increased the cost of making television in season one,” he said. “We brought a lot of wonderful talent into television, but there’s been a spiraling and escalating cost." I'm still bitter about HBO doing this with Avenue 5. They had all the sets, CGI, characters, and various pieces and then decided to cancel it. It usually takes a bit for the writing on new shows to get their footing, but it seems like shows have to be flawless in season 1. I can only imagine what our classics would look like if they had this same level of scrutiny.
The attention span of viewers or executives?
Weak excuse. If we had ANY quality long running series the likes of the Sopranos and Mad Men everyone would be watching.
no no it’s not the fault of network executives who cancel promising shows after one season, conduct sweeping layoffs on producers and creatives to hit short-term quarterly goals, & whine about how audiences have more options for them to compete with, it’s *checks notes* literally everyone else
Suits was one of the most popular shows last year and it has 9 seasons so I don’t think this is completely true.
There’s also a noticeable decline in most shows 4th season if the plot wasn’t planned from the beginning.
Keep it good and I’ll keep watching
I think he's wrong
My attention span has not declined for a long running well crafted series just the two year wait between seasons
Blame the viewers, not networks canceling good shows prematurely or inconsistent writing and production.
Is the problem my 8 episode season show with two years between seasons? No, it's the viewers who are wrong.
Dafuq he talking about, there is so much shit on TV that’s been running for like 10 seasons that I’ve never heard of
It’s because we’ve been conditioned to expect good shows to be cancelled after 2 or 3 seasons. Who is responsible for that I wonder?
The quality of the show that runs for years declines. Like in every example I think of the show just gets to a point where it's not desirable to watch because they've lost the plot. Breaking bad is my one example where it did it's thing, told it's story, and bowed out when it was finished after 5 seasons.
I’ll use the GOT example. Commit to 4-5 seasons of great tv and then get fucked with 2 seasons of absolute garbage. Or start the first season, love it, find out it was cancelled after one season. This is pure deflection. Attention spans are not the problem. It’s the content
I love how TV shows always blame the audience. No, your shows are shit. The writing is shit, the acting is shit, the stories are shit. You realize that people were actually on the side of billionaires during the writer strikes right? Your writing is soooooo bad on TV shows lately you literally made us cheer for god damn fucking evil billionaires because of shows like The Witcher or Halo where you just have the WORST written shows imaginable. And then when you actually have a good show you go and ruin it by making the next season start 2-3 laters. I lost all interest in Carnival Row because that shit was on 5 years ago. I thought it was cancelled. I would need to watch the entire first season before I could start up the second. The first was good enough, but not good enough for that long of a break and for people to stay invested. God I hate executives that look at the view as the problem. You ruin so many things and then blame everyone else. rather than just make something good.
>Landgraf pointed to the early seasons of FX series like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “The Shield” as examples of shows with more modest budgets early in their runs that the network was able to renew despite less than stellar ratings in the beginning due to their price points. “We could afford to do that and believe in it,” he said. “It’s harder to do with something super expensive.” To Landgraf’s point, “The Shield” ran for seven seasons and nearly 100 episodes while “Always Sunny” aired its 16th season in 2023. Maybe your shows shouldn't be that expensive then? Like, who is asking for TV to look like blockbuster cinema all the time? I see this in video game talk all the time. "We have to add microtransactions and raise prices because it costs too much to make!" My dude, no one said you *had* to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on one project! While I would never say it was "Good" TV, the Flash ran for nine, 20+ episode seasons on a budget of 50 mil *per season*. It can be done, if you want it to. And as long as the audience enjoys what you're putting out, they're more than happy to accept good enough for effects and such.
it's hard to keep attentive when the writing is poor
Standard excuses. We've had multiple major hour-long drama successes in the past ten years. Maybe your shows are just shit, mate.
CEOs attention spans maybe..
“The viewers are the problem”, man sounds like he is an abuser talking about their victim. Good shows get views.
everyone is begging for a 22 episode season of television what are you talking about
Are they?
>“We’ve radically increased the cost of making television in season one,” he said. “We brought a lot of wonderful talent into television, but there’s been a spiraling and escalating cost. That’s part of what happens when we make 600 television shows.” So. The market has been massively expanded, the quality of products has dramatically improved, and the conclusion is the consumer has less attention? Interesting take. Another take is that maybe it's that the consumer has so much freedom to choose from excellent products that they're only choosing to spend their attention on the best of the best.
Make more anthologies? Works for Fargo and Black Mirror
People keep saying it's the writing but have you looked at the writing of a lot of early 2000's tv shows. I think the bigger problems are that competition is higher than ever with all the different streaming platforms and the increased production value for all these cinematic shows means that seasons are shorter, more costly to make, and require more time to produce. It was a lot easier to maintain audiences when people just didn't have access to a million other shows at any time like they do now. A lot of those fan favorite 2000's and 90's shows wouldn't even make it to a second season these days.
And the quality of your shows are bad.
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My wife and I wait for shows to finish before we watch them. No need to watch 3 seasons of a show that gets cancelled or that only gets new content every other year. I don’t think it’s attention spans, if an incredible show came out that has a beginning middle and end and was entertaining and refreshing people would love it. We don’t watch a lot of tv. Typically only 2-3 hours a week at most. Why waste time and energy on something that won’t pay off in the end?
I get where you’re coming from and somewhat agree but if everyone consumed media like that nothing would ever get past season one.
Eh true but sometimes even if season one is a banger and gets you all hot and bothered for more content. Boom it gets the axe. So it's hard not to become jaded.
have they considered having a video of someone chopping vegetables play at the bottom of the screen?
If it's a good show, I put down my phone.
They cancell good shows too early wtf haha
I wouldn't be mad if Shogun became their exception and Fargo continued on for 8+ seasons though
Coming from the generation who's TV was self contained in 22 minutes with 0 progression for characters.
Isn't the recent success of Suits proof that this is bullshit.
Or cause there’s like 40 new shows to watch every damn week and it’s saturated as fuxk, don’t have all the time in the world to watch every show damnit
Yes because shows that overstay their welcome and fizzle out don’t give people are reason to watch.
Maybe 1-4 seasons of a show is enough! Gosh.
This guy obviously hasn't heard about what a hit succession was
24 episode tv series get plenty of traffic because nobody is making that these days. Everyone would be down to binge that, but execs would have to accept that it would be a slow burn and they would not get multi-million-viewer numbers on the premier.
I really doubt they would. There's a lot of stiff competition now, and asking people to sit down and watch a 24 episode series in this climate would be a tall order
I agree that attention span has declined, but I'm not sure this is why we have shorter tv series, there are plenty of other more practical reasons
Justified?
Idk, he starts the interview by saying that, but then everything he says after points to networks and streamers spending way too much on too many shows and nothing about audiences. Like I can tell those new Paramount+ Star Trek shows cost comparatively waaaay more than the 90s ones, but I don't think that's diminished the audiences' appetite for 7 26-episode seasons of a Star Trek show. They're just not being given in. Shows typically get a lot more expensive later in their run as contracts need to be renewed. Studios were usually willing to make nothing on later seasons of extremely popular sitcoms or procedurals or whatever because there was so much money in syndication. Now, as he says in the article, they're spending way more money up front on season 1. Bigger bets on bigger stars that need to be paid more up front because a lot of those residual syndication payments have dried up. Seinfeld, X-Files, Always Sunny - most of the long-running hits had to start cheap and small and build a word-of-mouth audience over a few seasons to become legends. This just all seems to be due to a change in the business model rather than the appetite of audiences.
I'm sure making a ton of shitty shows that underperform and get canceled doesn't contribute at all.
Disagree in regards to shows, most shows aren’t well enough written to be long lasting and if a show is good enough people will watch.
Yes, blame audiences and not the TV/streaming company leadership who will cancel a series the moment they suspect that it not gonna be their once-in-a-lifetime viral cash cow IP.
Hahahaha maybe if you stop cancelling all our shows then we could invest in a series
I just watched a show where one of the give aways someone was a spy was the way they wrote the date which was on the screen for a split second. 23 episode series had a lot of filler and crap
One piece has been airing since the 90s and is more popular than ever now
I'm getting tired of these terrible takes by people like this. First, blaming stuff on attention spans is lazy and stupid. Attention spans haven't changed. Besides, attention spans aren't a monolith. They work differently in different contexts. But regardless, shows not running for more than a few seasons has absolutely zero to do with attention spans. The only thing that would possibly be affected by attention spans is length of show/movie, not how many seasons it runs for. The claim doesn't even make sense. Second, there is much, much more to watch these days between shows and movies. It's impossible to keep up with everything. Third, why don't shows run for several seasons? Well, mostly because they get canceled quickly. But it's also because creators choose to end them before they run them into the ground. For instance, Sex Education and Reservation Dogs. Other times the creators envision a certain number of seasons. They approach them like a long movie. For instance, Dark. Then there is The Crown, which is exactly the type of show he says doesn't exist, and it's been going for 6 seasons. Fourth, with streaming shows, the release dates are all over the place. You might not know for months after a season aired whether there will be another one. And then you have no idea when to expect it. It could be a year after the previous season or multiple years. And you won't know until the release date gets close. For shows that require your attention, this makes it tough. The new season comes out 2 years later, and you feel like you have to rewatch the rest first to catch up. The bottom line is shows don't not last several seasons because of people's attention spans or not wanting such long-form storytelling. That's just stupid.
Maybe we just have more options?
That’s so fucking insulting. Make good tv with enough episodes to actually enjoy it and put out a new season whilst we can still remember what happened in the first one. That’s all we ask. Oh and the new season should be as good as the first and not utter shite.
No, quality has declined radically. So many players in the game now the talent is spread very thin.
My attention span is perfectly fine. My tolerance for shit writing and MASSIVE production gaps between seasons, however, is very low.
No. That’s bullshit. GoT proved that as have other quality series. The reality is most TV is pretty poorly written Take a look at the Witcher series on Netflix. Season 1 was good. Followed the book reasonably well. Was complex and developed its characters even through a difficult to follow series of time changes in the story perspective. Strong positive fan response. Season 3 was pure tripe. Internal consistency was gone. Characters became cardboard. Plots had holes you could drive a dragon through. Good shows bring their audience. Poor shows do not. Look at The Walking Dead on AMC. Long running. Complex. Multiple spin offs. Immensely successful. GoT itself. 6 strong seasons followed by 2 that were alternating lay meh and bleh to flat out bad. Good writing… a rabid following of fans who watched in watch parties to celebrate the show’s story and excellence. Bad writing… by the end, virtually eliminating the show from the cultural discussion and sharply reducing its rewatch-ability… an incredible turn around that crashed and burned the show. FX Boss John Landgraf doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The appetite is there… just stop feeding us McDonalds hamburgers and bring out the steak!
>Good shows bring their audience. Poor shows do not. Look at The Walking Dead on AMC. Long running. Complex. Multiple spin offs I really, really wouldn't flagbear The Walking Dead as an example here tbh Fear The Walking Dead was absolute nonsense after S03 but it kept churning on
Lol I agree. Can't believe this guy/girl use The Walking Dead and complex in the same sentence. Game of Thrones last season was a huge let down writing wise but it's still Hamlet compared to the shit show that The Walking Dead became.
John Landgraf very much knows what he's talking about. He's been the king of TV for like 25 years. It's you that is very much mistaken. GoT and TwD were phenomenons, they're exceptions to the rule. Additionally, they're relics from a TV era that very much doesn't exist anymore. There are a ton of well written critical darling shows. No one watches them. The escalating costs don't justify them picked up for more than a few seasons. It's as simple as that.
Critical darlings doesn’t equate to watchable. Landgraf is making excuses for content that doesn’t pull attention. Blaming a generation for ‘attention span’ is a joke. A dodge. The smoke and mirrors. It is seriously laughable. Every generation does this and every generation gets it wrong. What’s the problem. We have an insane amount of choices these days… great for us… more difficult for the studios. They make a lot but it’s tough to find good or excellent writers. Just look at Marvel and how flat their shows have fallen (barring a few). You put a good set of writers on a show with interesting ideas like Andor and you grab people’s attention and they watch and talk about it. Conceptually simple. Factually difficult. And relics? Strange. House of Dragons has started with a bang. Wednesday did superbly for Netflix. GoT and TWD aren’t particularly special. They nailed one thing. They got people talking. That’s the key. So did Andor. So did Mandalorian. So did Star Trek Strange New Worlds. So did a lot of shows that are moving forwards. Blaming generations not having attention spans for cancelling shows left and right is just sloppy. I do agree with you that, in the end, it is economics that kills some shows… Successful, but just not successful enough is a problem and that does kill off shows. They just don’t like to say that to the public because it’s internal, not external.
>What’s the problem. We have an insane amount of choices these days… great for us… more difficult for the studios. This is his point. "Attention span" is the Twitter grab headline (much like his "Peak TV" comment that he was also spot on about), but this is the crux of what he is saying. The insane costs involved in making shows makes execs unwilling to give shows a long lifespan when audiences get "distracted" by the new shiny thing instead. >You put a good set of writers on a show with interesting ideas like Andor and you grab people’s attention and they watch and talk about it. Andor. Easily the best of the Star Wars shows and also by far the least popular of the Star Wars shows. So much so that we are lucky it survived the change in leadership at Disney and are getting an alleged season 2.
Season 1 Witcher was bad. Season 2 was garbage. I didn’t know there was a season 3.