Hello Kevin. The span attention of the average viewer is definitely shorter nowadays. The audiences were influenced by the television. If you ask older TV viewers, the films used to have two or maybe three intervals for adverts. Now they are striped in pieces, sometimes every 7 minutes (!!!). That created a new way to watch movies or TV programmes. If you try to put a group watching a movie in these days, many of the people will lose interest after a certain time. Young viewers definitely will lose interest even more quickly. To many distractions on different media made the levels of span to fall drastically. I not only did my studies on TV but also I've been working in schools, and is impressive how the children are narrowing their capacity of attention for example to watch a simple movie. Other phenomenon that grown in the last two or three decades is the zapping. Again, the films or programmes were slashed in pieces to be consumed. With the audiences jumping from channel to channel, not following an entire show. The number of channels increased and the viewers don't have to stay on the same channel all day. They start jumping from programme to programme and nowadays they don't even stay long in the same programme. If you follow with attention the evolution of the television, you probably already realised that we are at the moment of a big evolution on the TV history. The new DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) is making one of the biggest revolutions since the TV become on colour. The viewers will become on control. They will have the chance to chose what they want to watch and when and how they want to watch. Soon the television as we know will disappear and will be closer to what we have at moment with the internet. Why the film industry is starting to be more interested on the home cinema and the digital offer. Because people can have more commodity watching films on their living room. At their own pace and much cheaper than a traditional cinema. This is a bit long answer for your question, but it "resumes" why the span is declining. The same way the Film producers are very keen to understand these changes. In one way the reduce the costs by shortening the films, in other way they are matching the evolution of the audiences. Believe me, if the audiences will start to follow longer productions and claim for that, the majors will follow that straight away! But as I wrote before, we are at a turning point of the TV and Film history. Things are happening at a really fast pace. What I'm writing here today, can be out dated tomorrow. Regards Joao
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The economy determines the length of the movie as does the attention span of the average viewer. Is this span shorter nowadays?
Hello Kevin. The span attention of the average viewer is definitely shorter nowadays. The audiences were influenced by the television. If you ask older TV viewers, the films used to have two or maybe three intervals for adverts. Now they are striped in pieces, sometimes every 7 minutes (!!!). That created a new way to watch movies or TV programmes. If you try to put a group watching a movie in these days, many of the people will lose interest after a certain time. Young viewers definitely will lose interest even more quickly. To many distractions on different media made the levels of span to fall drastically. I not only did my studies on TV but also I've been working in schools, and is impressive how the children are narrowing their capacity of attention for example to watch a simple movie. Other phenomenon that grown in the last two or three decades is the zapping. Again, the films or programmes were slashed in pieces to be consumed. With the audiences jumping from channel to channel, not following an entire show. The number of channels increased and the viewers don't have to stay on the same channel all day. They start jumping from programme to programme and nowadays they don't even stay long in the same programme. If you follow with attention the evolution of the television, you probably already realised that we are at the moment of a big evolution on the TV history. The new DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) is making one of the biggest revolutions since the TV become on colour. The viewers will become on control. They will have the chance to chose what they want to watch and when and how they want to watch. Soon the television as we know will disappear and will be closer to what we have at moment with the internet. Why the film industry is starting to be more interested on the home cinema and the digital offer. Because people can have more commodity watching films on their living room. At their own pace and much cheaper than a traditional cinema.
This is a bit long answer for your question, but it "resumes" why the span is declining. The same way the Film producers are very keen to understand these changes. In one way the reduce the costs by shortening the films, in other way they are matching the evolution of the audiences. Believe me, if the audiences will start to follow longer productions and claim for that, the majors will follow that straight away! But as I wrote before, we are at a turning point of the TV and Film history. Things are happening at a really fast pace. What I'm writing here today, can be out dated tomorrow.
Regards
Joao
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