What is 'Second Screening' and Why is it Causing Writers to 'Dumb Down' Their Craft?

Is television getting worse? Or are you just more distracted?

Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash

Second screening has been a bit of a buzz phrase this past year after whispers of writers from at least one streaming giant were asked to dumb down their scripts. Why? Because television has become a second screen after statistics show that most people scroll their phones while watching (or really not watching) their usual shows. Essentially, we’ve become so addicted to doom scrolling that we can’t pay attention to basic plots anymore and, as a result, television is being dumbed down so it can easily be understood while only paying partial attention. This means the rules of good writing are getting thrown out the window as plots become super simple, and characters now repeat who they are and what they are doing like robotic idiots so you can easily follow along while scrolling Instagram for the hundredth time. The idea is that if a show is in any way too complex to follow while only paying partial attention, a viewer will just shut it off out of frustration and continue to scroll online instead. And streamers obviously don’t want you to turn off the tv.

So are we doomed to become a population of distracted idiots? Is the era of prestige television over? And are we really that unable to focus or understand complex art in the current era? To be fair, there is evidence that social media has caused issues with concentration and attention span, but there have been articles about micro-impatience ever since the internet became common in the home. So is this maybe more about television just not being that great and no one wanting to pay attention to content that isn’t engaging? Except that’s not entirely true either.

The 2000s are generally considered to be the prestige era of television. We had critically acclaimed showed like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The West Wing, The Wire, House of Cards, and Breaking Bad. These shows were considered to be of higher artistic merit, had complex and high concept plots, and had audiences raving to tune in each week. Several of these shows are also what first drew subscribers to pay cable or early streaming platforms. It’s hard to believe House of Cards was Netflix’s flagship original show compared to their offerings today. So what about prior to this period? If television wasn’t so great before this point, why did we all still watch it?

It’s too easy to say its because we didn’t have social media back then because why didn’t we just do something else? We do need to look at technology, though, as well as culture. A lot of shows from the 90s look outdated and unoriginal by today’s standards, but for the time they were new and novel. And I’m not just talking about space ships, car chases, and explosions. Even the situations and jokes on shows such as Roseanne, Friends, or Will & Grace were new for their time. Murphy Brown even had the American Vice President publicly commenting on how terrible it was for Murphy to have a baby out of wedlock. (Talk about outdate opinions!) Roseanne was considered controversial for showing a strong, outspoken woman as the head of a working class family. Will & Grace had the first kiss between two men during prime time. And Friends, well, if you were around during it’s original run then you know how absolutely everyone watched on a Thursday so you’d be able to join in on the conversations on Friday. These shows were cultural phenomenons and groundbreakers, which is why there is a lot of nostalgia for shows like Friends among a certain age group, but younger people often can’t relate.

Those shows may not have had the complexities or production values of the prestige era, but there was still something more there. We were engaged back then for good reason, even if those reasons wouldn’t work today. Of course, there was less to watch back then, and we all had to turn in weekly instead of binge watching on our own time.(Which is perhaps why we’re seeing some streamers, like Apple TV, switch to a weekly episode drop for its shows). We didn’t have a million cable channels and a dozen streaming options back then. Most of the population was watching the same shows at the same time and talking about them the day after they aired. So maybe we have too much choice today? We can’t watch it all, so we don’t. And if we can’t binge a show when it comes out, the buzz fades away and we just miss that one. On to the next! After all, we now have Uber Eats, fast fashion, Amazon delivery, etc. There is so much choice and so little need to put in effort for pleasure these days. So is it just grass is greener syndrome? We aren’t getting dumber, we’re getting more dismissive. We seek instant pleasure, and if we don’t find it immediately we seek something easier. Or if we miss one boat, we just order up another.

But if that’s really the case then what’s making doom scrolling more attractive than good television? Surely doom scrolling is not more innovative or pleasurable or new for us. It may be easier, though. So perhaps it’s that we actually need more to stimulate us and we’re seeking easier ways to get it. We now need two crappy yet effortless things to occupy our minds when there isn’t something more attractive or better on offer. Does this mean the answer all along was to make better television instead of dumbing it down? Maybe. However, it may not be the complex plots and high production values of the 2000s era that we should be chasing. Perhaps it’s more of the 90s era we should return to. Of course with today’s cancel culture and tightrope walk around recent censorship like that of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, creators are hesitant to green light controversial topics. We may not be able to make a Murphy Brown or Will & Grace for the 2020s quite yet. However, what we can take from these shows is that audiences strongly related to and rooted for Murphy, as well as Will and Grace, and all of the characters from Friends. For those of us who remember, how big was the whole Ross and Rachel on a break episode? It was huge! And people talked about who was right for weeks. The key here may actually be rooted in how a show makes you feel. It’s about empathy, connection, and relatability.

We need to care about a show and its characters, which is why I think Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek found such loyal and dedicated viewerships in more recent times. But how, exactly, to get an audience to care about a show this much may be a bit of magic or secret sauce, so to speak. After all, it can be hard to predict which characters will become fan favourites and which won’t hit the mark. This bit of magic may have also played a role in prestige tv. This past summer I rewatched all of Sex and the City, and while the show is dated (and I personally feel very differently about Mr. Big now than I did while originally watching this show as a teenager), I still care about Carrie Bradshaw. But more than that, I’m still engrossed in the episode arcs, even when I know the outcome already. More recently, I started Six Feet Under (a show I didn’t see the first time around) and it’s fantastic, and, no, I do not look at my phone while it’s on. Even though that show premiered nearly 25 years ago, there is still something about it that holds my attention completely. It may be that these prestige shows hit all the points made here. They have complex plots, hot topic issues, new ideas, great artistry, and characters we care about. Do we have to hit all these points to create a great show? Seemingly not. So why are we dumbing down tv instead of at least trying for a few of these things?

However, the thing we’re forgetting is that while Six Feet Under and Sex and the City were airing, we also had a lot bad tv come out of that era. The 2000s also brought us reality television, for example. Perhaps we’re only remembering the good things, the nostalgia, the shows that really stuck with us, or those few that do stand the test of time. Perhaps this second screening phenomenon really isn’t anything new and television was always this way. We may not have had a smart phone in our hands, but we did browse newspapers and magazines, do our homework, or make dinner while watching tv. Even now, we listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and music while multitasking. Should television be any different? Is second screening really more distracting than having a magazine open on your lap?

The issue isn’t really whether television should be prestige or background noise, but that this is the first time it’s being actively dumbed down. I also have to wonder whether the recent rise in audiobooks will contribute to a dumbing down of novels, too. Same with the downturn in cinema attendance. Will books, films, podcasts, etc all be dumbed down for distracted consumption? And what will that do to art and artists overall? What will that do to culture? Yet, we’ve never needed this dumbing down to multitask in the past, so why focus so heavily on doing it now? With streamers loosing subscribers, I have to wonder if this is a desperate attempt at keeping viewers at any cost. If we get folks into a habit of scrolling while watching simplistic tv, then will subscribers hold on?

Personally, I’d say no. But this opinion is coming from someone who cancelled Netflix, kept Apple TV, and recently added HBO. All this because I’m looking for the good stuff. I want to escape into a good show. And yes, I want to watch Six Feet Under. Plus, if I’m going to numb out or look for a distraction, I don’t want to pay a monthly subscription to do it. I can listen to a podcast, YouTube, music, or a free online news stream while I mindlessly doom scroll. Turning streaming subscriptions into background chatter isn’t a selling point for me. These types of shows also aren’t going to add to the next day’s social chatter, or become must-see television. I originally subscribed to Apple TV to watch Ted Lasso, and I kept it because of great shows like Slow Horses and Shrinking. I didn’t get it to stream simplistic chatter while watching cat videos on TikTok.

Besides, is this really the best money-making strategy? Taking all artistic and cultural significance out of this argument, I don’t see how this helps advertisers. With streamers turning to ads to beef up their profits, how are distracted viewers, barely paying attention, a good market for advertisers? I don’t see how someone will be convinced to buy a product from an ad if they aren’t even paying attention. Wouldn’t prestige tv, where viewers are locked-in, be better for turning advertising revenue? Plus there’s an argument to be made for prestige tv being today’s only must-see television (outside of sports and special event programming). For the shock factor, flash in the pan, car chases, or guy-gets-hit-with-football spectacles that reality tv once supported, people now go to TikTok or YouTube. There’s probably a much larger article in all this specifically about ad revenue strategy and how we retain an ad to actually make a purchase, but I’ll rest this argument here for now.

The issue with second screening boils down not to whether one style of television is better than the other, but to having only one style of television. What does it say about us as a culture that we’re turning our free time into a block of distracted viewing? Are we really at a place where we’d rather grey out into several fractured media sources instead of consuming or creating better art? Sure we’ve always had bad tv, but we’ve always had good tv, too. And more importantly, we’ve had choice about which we consume. This shouldn’t be an all or nothing approach, and we shouldn’t be encouraging distracted viewing. Instead, we should find ways to create more engaging shows, and to perhaps accept that we’ve always had distracted viewing without having to dumb things down for people to keep tuning in. And if all this is true, why the heck are we accepting the sudden need any dumbed down media at all?