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The two clock paradox: How short-form content became premium entertainment (and what to do about it)

People are spending more time than ever on entertainment they never intended to set aside time for, and that is becoming the new ‘premium.’

Entertainment companies everywhere are now acknowledging that they have to operate based upon two clocks. One of them is an alarm clock—the premiere you clear your night for, the finale you go to great lengths to avoid spoilers for, and the release that causes you to refresh the page at midnight in order to listen or watch. The other is the clock that you fail to realize is ticking—the scrolling that takes up 40 minutes between two things you actually intended to do, the podcast playing in the background as you cook, and the feed that flows like a faucet. Let’s refer to the first as the appointment clock and the second as the ambient clock.

For most of television’s history the appointment clock had been the main concern. The networks would plan out their entire schedules with the aim of getting people to arrange their evenings around a broadcast. Streaming didn’t destroy that logic; it simply transferred the appointment from a fixed hour to a fixed week—with the Sunday night drop and the season that releases all the episodes at once, even though everyone still rushes to finish it before it gets spoiled. There was also the ambient clock, mostly in the form of radio, news, or the kind of content you’d walk by in an airport; mostly in the background and mostly regarded as a second-rate option. The kind of programming that was appointment-based........

© Fast Company