I do soccer broadcasts over the internet so I know all too well this whole deal about short v. long. In my case it’s somewhat twofold. First, a 45-minute half, as soccer halves tend to last, translate into gigantic files which take forever to load up. And then take forever to listen to.
Which I think is one of the keys, from a user’s point of view of the prevalence of short in detriment of long. In my experience a particularlong file may be the most entertaining thing ever, but if it takes a darn long while to load up, I might not really put up with the wait time. This isn’t always the case. Hulu does a pretty neat job of loading up entire episodes of the Tonight Show within seconds.
However, what makes me wonder is whether the fact that these folks are looking for full episodes of this show or that show makes them more devoted fans of the thing, and hence more willing to put up with the wait, if there was one. I know of many instances where waiting for the little circle of dots to do its thing on YouTube has caused me to go the “Oh, screw this” route and find some other way to waste time.
Attention span is also a factor. There’s a reason why screens on TV are rarely bare anymore. From the ticker on Sportscenter to the ridiculous busyness of Headline News’ shots, people want as much as possible in as little time as possible. I don’t regularly watch evening news anymore (for reasons that would take a while to explain, and which have little to do with the news business itself) but I doubt there’s the inclination to do an editorial the way the late Mr. Cronkite used to do them, expounding on a subject. Usually, the emphasis now, particularly in news show commercials is on “look how fast we can tell you all this stuff.”
Cost also has to have something to do with it. It may be cheaper to do something short. I am not going to expound much on this because I’m just going out on a limb on that one.
This talk about long v. short brought to mind something that happened to me a week ago. I watched Citizen Kane the other day and my wife said “One hour and 59 minutes? That is long!” before popping the disc in.
The last movie she watched before that was “Bolt,” which was 23 minutes shorter. The movie before that was two minutes longer than Citizen Kane.
