Watching a show while washing dishes or preparing a meal is not unheard of. Yet we hear complaints about reduced attention spans, dying art forms, undemanding writing—a whole litany of them. This is a phenomenon that has been around almost since the first time we had consumer radio, and television after that. All that has changed is that the OTT platforms have figured out how to thrive on this behavior.
The Phenomenon
Television Serials are a staple entertainment in Indian households. There is an in-joke about dramatic zoom sequences, stitching reactions of characters occupying a scene with hysterical sounds and effects used repeatedly to anchor key confrontations, conflicts and climaxes. Those who are not the core demographic of these shows find this absurd, even mildly funny. But the confident use of shock sequences and reaction shots shows commitment to a specific audience—homemakers, security guards, night-shift workers in many kinds of facilities. Workers faced with significant downtime who have to be present regardless of volume of work—quickly become ready consumers of these shows.
Periods of cognitive lull, brought about by engaging in routine tasks for long stretches create space for shows one can watch without committing attention. Characters cut from familiar archetypes, story arcs faithfully following templates, are necessary tropes to engage attention while not veering into the territory of utter novelty. It borders on snobbery to dismiss this audience as “not ready for subtler story-telling”, or pin it on reduced attention spans. Characterizing shows as purely commercially motivated and creatively stilted fails to recognize the larger context which has enabled this. Art has to be compared with the medium and audience held constant.
“How do we know they like it?”
OTT platforms plan their content around metrics which are calculated based on user interaction with the platform software. Metrics are chosen to have a significant relation to the growth of the platform. Average watch time is an obvious measure of success for a show, but all that means is how long a show played on a users screen, not what the user was up to while it was playing.
The exact quality and nature of a users engagement with online content is not meaningfully measurable given that it is subjective and computers work with numbers not “vibes”. Thus metrics based on platform software engagement act as a proxy for what one might naively call “A shows success”, providing the necessary signals.
However, this does not mean viewer discretion cannot prevail, in fact there has been a push back of sorts. As observed by Gracenotes in their “2025 State of Play”, the time people spend deciding what to watch has steadily increased. This is contrary to what one might expect to get easier with improvements in search and suggestion technology—finding a show viewer will like. The problem takes significance, since a good fraction of people who cannot find something suitable to watch—abandon a session. This even translates to reduced retention rate and increased churn of subscribers to OTT platforms.
While evidence of viewers better curating their streaming experience may appear to undercut the background viewing narrative, an odd detail lends more weight to it. Viewers spend as much as 26 minutes—the entire length or a good chunk of an episode—looking for shows they would like to watch.
Build up to binging
What has been carried right over from television sitcoms are quippy, witty dialogues, formulaic back-and-forth between unrealistically funny characters doing their “thing.” Visual subtext gets thinner since audio becomes the load bearing medium to convey the story. Ambiguity on one sensory front is compensated with additional breadcrumbs (sometimes more appropriate to call it loaves) from another, unless the intention is to leave the audience with space for interpretation.
Platform interfaces are designed to nudge users to drop into the groove of uninterrupted watching sessions. That is not surprising. What may surprise few though, comes to us from a study by Acta Psychologica. Users watching preferences dictate their perception of a platforms features and those who do prefer long watching sessions, do not feel that these features are manipulative.
Structure to Sustain Interest
Shows that run into a lot of episodes, and then into seasons are a different ballgame altogether. They are more demanding of a viewers time unlike a movie, and hence they cannot ask for more in other ways. Shows require structure to sustain user interest, like a university course. Letting every episode hang narration wise—to be picked up and tied neatly in a later unforeseeable episode—will quickly drain user interest. Closure is a reasonable expectation from a program one watches for an hour or two a day.
The need for a structure can be felt elsewhere—with cultures intermingling the scope for story telling with varied backgrounds has never been better. But again, viewers with different cultural backgrounds should not feel abandoned by a show which caters exclusively to an audience of a specific culture. This has to be done with a grace which is hard to achieve. Artistic and pragmatic decisions have to be taken and hard choices made. How many references are too many? Do we joke about their Dictator? They hate their potatoes, but we love them!
Attention to Economy
Attention is the currency of show business. That may sound crass, but it is what earns show makers their bread. Attention sustains itself through structure, visual, aural, narrative. If not handled carefully, structure can deal awful blows to fluid concepts, spaces for interpretation—almost anything that makes a good story tick. What that means for us is, we must account for structure in long form shows and how they are written. But we are allowed to judge how deftly it is being used without compromising creativity.
Ambiguous story-telling is not by any means the good old tradition. Folk music, the dominant medium of story transmission was not known for ambivalent characters with twists. Thus, familiarity has always been a valued element in compelling story telling—the viewer can tell that a character is going to be served their comeuppance and they’re there for it.
Structured attention allows us to switch off, to pick up our hats and leave, talk and gasp about what happened with Cynthia or Sandhya. Then come back later tomorrow for more.
Tied ends
It becomes clear with how people interact with OTT platforms, that people have not lost complete control of their watching habits or preferences. Good shows get made regularly, and so do mediocre ones. Judgment is delivered by the audience. These things are clear from how people reveal their preference— spending good time searching for shows may mean it has become a ritual but abandoning sessions signals no compromise in taste.
Similarly, those appreciative of platform features enabling binge-watching know what they are doing. Where we stand morally about these things is subjective. We are not free of judgment and we are not free of judging.
Finally, back to shows that are designed for “background viewing”: A helpful analogy to understand this is—one likes familiar or even milder, patterns, iconography and colors when picking out upholstery or pajamas. The stylish, edgy, tastefully chaotic, is reserved for holidays and parties.