In the age of ‘second screens’, OTT shows have become background noise

Recently, Will Tavlin’s brilliant essay written for n+1 magazine spotlighted a worrying trend. It dove into Netflix’s “not second screen enough” secret. If the phone is your primary screen, then the show playing in the background, on your second screen, say your laptop or TV, must not interfere with it. In rejecting a script that’s not “second-screen enough”, the OTT executives make space for content that fetches them views without the user ever watching. This economics of unwatchable content relies on our reduced attention spans.

Now, this isn’t an attack on Netflix, and “casual viewing”, where you watch but barely pay attention, is by no means a new phenomenon. After an eight-hour shift slogging through meetings and emails, there’s an undeniable allure in letting your brain clock out for the day. Earlier, it would be what people called ‘trash TV’, one that didn’t require much processing. Now, it’s the shows tailor-made for casual viewing. The arcs are predictable, the dialogues are banal. You could even be re-watching something. You know how it ends; you could probably finish the dialogue before the actor. You can tune in and out as you please.

The situation, however, is not cataclysmic. There are shows that still grip us, make us cry, laugh and even angry. There are scripts that demand our attention, dialogues that make it to Instagram captions, and plots that are discussed on Reddit threads. Take the recent British offering, Adolescence, for instance, which sparked conversations worldwide and piqued interest with its unique cinematography. Or the spy thriller Slow Horses on Apple TV that didn’t stop serving even with four seasons.

Friends in the OTT industry tell me that while filmmakers acknowledge reduced attention spans, not all cater to it. As a recent Indian Express report also found, second-screen writing isn’t an industry-wide phenomenon just yet.

Tavlin’s essay revealed that Netflix wants screenwriters to have the characters clearly announce what they are doing. However, an Indian screenwriter, who wished to remain anonymous, explained that this concept of “over-exposition” isn’t new for Indian cinema at all. Think of any massy entertainer, whether for comedic relief or dramatic effect, characters are often too verbose about their intentions. A recent example from the Jewel Thief comes to mind (spoiler ahead). As our slick protagonist, played by Saif Ali Khan, tries to hack into a safe, he tells us it has four locks in total. The camera focuses as he opens two of them. Khan, rather redundantly, then announces, “two down, two more to go”. Similarly, years back, in Om Shanti Om (2007), one of the scenes focuses on Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), who has conspired to light a photo frame on fire using an electronic contraption. But the circuit appears to break. After multiple cuts clearly showing that the wire has detached, Pappu proclaims that it is not working, lest the audience miss that fact.

The ‘second-screen’ phenomenon, however, forces us to question: Why are OTT platforms churning out brain-dead content? As hard as it may be to admit, the answer may lie in our viewing habits.

Even as I type this, my phone lights up with a notification. I glance over—just in case it’s important. It rarely is, but what if this time? One thing leads to another. Now I’m watching a reel about five ways to style a saree, followed by a prodigal child singing Lata Mangeshkar, followed by a stand-up comic doing a knock-knock joke. Each bit of content — tiny, digestible, and deliberately non-essential — is just two seconds of my attention.

In this constant feed of almost-entertainment, a carousel of casual viewing, nothing sticks; nothing wants to. Perhaps, the value of content today is not in its substance, but in its disposability.