TV is getting dumber

0:00Noel King:Today's show is a rerun. Americans, it seems, have fallen back in love with going to the movies. Help me go home. The Odyssey is nudging up on a billion dollars in ticket sales. Spider-Man Brand New Day already hit a billion. You're gonna forget who I am. What? What are you talking about? A tiny indie horror movie called Obsession did almost half a billion at the box office. Bear, I love you so, so, so, so, so much. I don't think I could live without you. For a while, the smart money said movies were dead. Hollywood pivoted to make big bets on micro-dramas. Disney, Fox, Alexis Ohanian, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner.

0:36Noel King:All these bold-faced names poured millions of dollars into the teeny tiny next big thing. We're going to explain why they did coming up on Today Explained from Fox.

0:48Help me today! Explain! I love you so, so, so, so, so much. What? What are you talking about?

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2:18It's the day it's Wayne. It's the day it's Wayne. Gotta get down on the day it's Wayne. I'm C.T. Jones. I am a staff writer at Rolling Stone where I cover entertainment, culture, and the internet.

2:30Noel King:What exactly is a microdrama? What a fantastic question. Thank you. Microdramas are these short episodic films and they're filmed portrait mode. And they're meant to be watched and shared primarily on your cell phone. So as you're scrolling, clicking on apps, that's where microdramas appear. Okay, great. And now I have so many more questions. Microdrama, I mean, microdrama is like me texting my sister about my brother. What is it called a microdrama? Yeah, the whole point of them is that they're short, right? So they're in between films and TV seasons, but there are 60 to 90 episodes. And these episodes can range anywhere from four minutes to 10 to seven.

3:16It depends entirely on the project that you're watching. So that's why they call them micro. But it also refers to kind of the speed and the production. So we're talking about projects that have very, very, very tiny budgets and they have a very, very, very tiny shoot time. So altogether, microdrama. What is the appeal? Yeah, I think one of the really interesting things we've seen about the Internet in the past couple of years is that the way people scroll are changing the ways your attention span works. So we've already seen in cases like Mad Men. Not great, Bob. And Ugly Betty. Hi, that's me.

3:51People are watching things on their phone now, and that there is a link between how long people are willing to watch TV show, even if it's cut up into 100, 200 parts. If it means that they don't have to get off of their phone, go onto their laptop and log on to the streaming service where they know that that show exists. And it's also created for these kind of attention spans. So, like, you don't have time to probably watch four episodes of Ugly Betty between your commute and The Office. But if you're on the subway and you have access to data, you're like, I could watch two 45-second clips of Ugly Betty.

4:26You are an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswoman.

4:31Noel King:All right, so what's an example of a microdrama that's super popular? Like, what is the young and the restless microdrama or the breaking bad microdrama? So the best thing about microdramas is that they're not really dependent on these type of audiences that will give them all. So basically, there are a bunch of titles that I could name. For instance, Loving My Brother's Best Friend. You have got to get over this crush. He's your brother's best friend. Or I Kissed a CEO and He Liked It. Well, boss, who was that? I haven't seen you kiss anyone like that in ages. The titles themselves aren't very inventive, but they don't need to be to capture audiences.

5:09And tell Nate I'm not going to kill his sister. I'm going to marry him. Elena, I can't be with you. I'm just a man with a prosthetic. Aiden Gold is a werewolf. An alpha. And I refuse to be his mate.

5:24Noel King:How is anyone, everyone, how is money being made here and for whom? Yeah, so basically what happens, it's kind of a freebie situation where you will either get an ad, served an ad for these micro dramas, usually a very poignant part of the show. I have a proposition for you. Kind of a proposition. I know your situation. You work in three jobs, you got a pile of medical bills, and you're behind on everything else. How do you know all of that? That is exciting, is narrative-driven. I will take care of all that. I will take care of you. All you have to do is one thing for me. And then it cuts right before you find out what happens next.

6:09What's the catch? And then the ad pops up and it's like, please go to the app to continue more. You have to marry my daughter. But for people who are active microdrama watchers, what usually happens is you have a free subscription and you can watch up to a certain amount of episodes of a particular show. And then it costs anywhere between$4 to$15 to upload more credits so that you can finish the rest of the show. And a lot of these microdramas, because they are kind of reliant on these instant transactions, it's instant feedback, right? It's people who want to scroll, who want to keep scrolling and keep following this.

6:47They're willing to be like, okay, here's$2. Here's$3. Here's$2 to finish the show. When in reality, if you look at it, most of these microdrama apps in a yearly format cost far more than a Netflix subscription or a Hulu subscription or a Mac subscription as it were.

7:03Noel King:Where do microdramas come from? Microdramas are actually an import. The very first place where they really took off in popularity was actually in China.

7:20Between 2018 and 2020, we saw this huge, huge rise in interest in microdramas. Look, there are over a billion internet users in China. Half of them have watched these mini-drama series before, and a third of them are scrolling through them every day. So it's a huge industry, 35%. But what China really set apart from this was that you could make microdramas fast and cheap. And a lot of other countries saw the success of that and decided we can do this as well. So when the United States kind of took on all of the things that made Chinese microdramas so successful, they ran into this huge wall, which was we can make things fast and we can make things cheap.

8:02I don't know if the actors are going to like it very much.

8:04Noel King:What is it like to be an actor or an actress in a microdrama? It all depends on who hires you.

8:15A lot of microdramas in L.A. have tried to set themselves apart, especially these newer companies, as places where you can get great pay. You can kind of learn on the fly. You're getting a bunch of things and a lot of training that you might not get, say, if you were straight out of NYU's Tisch. But other experiences on other sets could mean that if you sign with a microdrama company who is just in it to make the content as fast as possible, a lot of actors allege these grueling hours, poor pay, racial disparity in leading roles, and lack of stunt safety. I talked to one vertical actress, 24-year-old Molly Anderson, who told me about kind of how much harder it is for women who are acting in these microdramas than men.

8:56Men have these beautiful, a lot of times handsome roles where they're the sex symbols and micro dramas have mainly female audiences. Molly told me the male actor is going to be dressed up in a very nice suit and maybe he's got to shed a single tear once or twice. But for the most part, he's going to stand in the back, brood, and then sweep you off your feet. For actresses, you scream, cry, throw up on command, and then you run off to go get waterboarding. You are not going to crack. You're just going to cry. You're going to cry like you've never cried before, but your spirit, your spirit will remain solid.

9:31That's the typical day.

9:36Yikes. Are you getting paid for 70 episodes? One of the interesting things about microdramas is that the contracts also vary wildly depending on what company you're working with. So as a writer, you could be looking at$2 ,000 to just hand in a script. as an author who has a book idea that they want to kind of take and use$1 ,000,$5 ,000. It really, really depends on who you're working with and how much they want it. For an actor, you're probably looking at$500 a day, which is super, super, super affordable and really great rate for people who are non-union. And from a Hollywood perspective, you can say yes to projects because you're not committing the world.

10:18And if anything, you're committing$100 ,000 here. Another$100 ,000 there. Costs and money that would frankly disappear or round up to small percentages for giant projects. I've talked to a bunch of vertical actors who are kind of caught in the middle of this. They see the way that the industry is changing, and they love the idea of Hollywood executives being more willing to say yes to stories. What they're concerned about is that verticals, and particularly the way that they are made, will leave these actors behind in the process.

10:52Noel King:Hollywood is obviously having a lot of problems right now. So if you're Hollywood and you're seeing, hey, there's a way to do 70 episodes and pay an actor, you know,$500 a day and still make a little bit of money with every single person who views them, do you think that this is going to change Hollywood? I actually don't. I think microdramas are incredibly interesting. But I think the problem Hollywood sees right now is, frankly, a cowardice. Hollywood is drowning right now under this exhaustion with IP because for the past five years, executives have been afraid to make creative content. Microdramas, on the other hand, succeed by creating serialized content with storylines that are virtually public domain.

11:36So it's IP, just so many IPs crammed together that you're like, yeah, I guess I'll watch it. Sure, I'll watch this werewolf billionaire CEO. Do you see what I mean? All of those buzzwords smashed together. I don't think this will change Hollywood, but I think it's because microdramas aren't intending to change Hollywood. But microdramas aren't about, you know, taking over the Emmys, taking over the Oscars. I doubt that you could find a microdrama CEO who says, yes, I think kissing my brother's best friend is going to sweep this year at the Oscars. That's fine. I'm not afraid of some competition.

12:12But what they want to do is target viewers during their in-between time. These kind of passive scrolls that you know can kind of give your attention to an ad or a three-minute clip about a cheerleader or a hockey player or a kind of sexy werewolf. This is where microdramas thrive, and this is why I think they won't ever actually take over Hollywood, because they don't want your attention. Microdramas work the best when you're not really watching them. Because if you were going to watch a microdrama like you might watch the new Springsteen movie in a dark room with your closest friends, you've got nothing but time to look at the screen.

12:53I bet if you watched a microdrama like that, you would go, wait a minute, I don't think this makes sense. This might not even be good.

13:14Noel King:How could rules were never her thing not be good? Just me? C.T. Jones writes for Rolling Stone. Coming up, is TV getting dumber? Yes, of course it is. You don't need me to explain that. But did studio executives order it to get dumber? We're going to ask.

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17:28Rebecca! Rebecca! Rebecca! Hop in! Cool. Which seat? You choose.

17:35Noel King:Which seat should I take? Today Explained is so back with Julia Alexander. Julia is a media correspondent at Puck News. So, Julia, in the first half of the show, we talked about micro dramas. You know what these are? Yes. Do you have a favorite one? In the sense that they're all the same, I suppose I enjoy all of them as much as I dislike all of them. What is the appeal? What is the love-hate grounded in? Do you know what it is? It's not for me, and I understand the love for it, though. I think the Venn diagram of people who like microdramas and people who love to read smutty fan fiction is like one giant circle.

18:16And I think actually the appeal of microdramas is that they're not a Netflix original or a Martin Scorsese movie. They're the complete opposite. They're a guilty pleasure at 99 cents a chapter.

18:27Noel King:We were going to title this episode The Second Screen Problem, but nobody actually knows what that means. When people in the industry talk about the second screen problem, what do they mean? So it depends on who you're asking in the industry. If you talk to creatives, the second screen, meaning the phone that you're watching TikToks on while watching a movie on your big TV or the iPad you're surfing Exxon while watching a TV show on your big TV, The second screen is just a lack of attention that is being paid to the main movie or film on the television. But if you talk to executives, the question or the problem of the second screen rather is one of does the adoration for TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts mean that people will spend enough less time with our streaming services that they'll cancel and we have to fight back for those subscribers.