Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2023 4:04:27 GMT -5
What I am about to post now risks making me look like an idiot with a short attention span, but, sadly, things are what they are.
Is brevity not a thing with media now? Podcast episodes can be 4-5 hours long. Big movies seem to want to be 3 hours now. WWE PPVs can be nearly 5 hours long.
Who can be interested in *anything* for 4 or 5 hours?
I don’t have a short attention span. I’ll binge a 4-hour mini-series if it intrigues me. I was engrossed in a podcast last night (68 minutes). Give me a ten-page article - or more than ten pages - on the history of the National Wrestling Alliance.
But I feel less is more.
Stephen King will spend what seems like 2-3 pages describing the weeds growing out of a Greyhound bus station. Meanwhile, James Herbert, if he was writing something similar, would have described the bus station’s weeds in one paragraph.
A wrestler will cover a detailed topic in one hour on his podcast episode, covering a lot of history. Meanwhile, Jim Cornette appears to believe people want to hear 4+ hours of his podcast (I know he shares individual clips, but is there anyone on Earth who listens to his episodes in full all of the time?).
Some top movies seem to be going for the 3-hour mark even though it often seems excessive. One film critic stated that Oppenheimer could have shed some weight (I may be paraphrasing). Meanwhile, a 2-hour movie, or even a 90-minute movie, may do a similar theme in a better way.
A Facebook friend of mine is a Christian. She told me her pastor aims for a 25-minute sermon, rarely going over. She then showed me YouTube links of pastors who may do 2 or 3-hour sermons.
It isn’t about attention span. I read John Grisham’s The Firm in less than 2 days because I was hooked. No, for me, it’s about whether something SHOULD be long. As a huge wrestling fan, I believe PPVs should be 3 hours long. 4 hours if it’s a tournament or something. But when you look at your clock and see the PPV has been running for 4 hours 18 minutes, you start to groan.
I’m pretty sure some podcast hosts could cover a topic in an hour. Or 90 minutes. Or two hours maximum (it depends on the topic). But we all have busy lives. I’m sorry, but if a comic artist wants to talk about his work on a particular title, 2 hours 34 is too long. Give it to me in an hour or 90 minutes.
On that note, I think I prefer magazine interviews (with, say, a comic artist) over a podcast. A magazine editor knows he has a limited page/word count, so he’ll ask the relevant questions and it’ll have brevity. But with a podcast, there can be “dead time”, tangents, etc. A podcast host might spend 10 minutes telling you about how his cable provider screwed something up, and at the same time, the USPS delivered the wrong package to his house. And then you realise 15 minutes of the podcast has been airing, and he hasn’t even begun to discuss the subject you’ve tuned in for. You wouldn’t get that in a magazine.
Is brevity not a thing with media now? Podcast episodes can be 4-5 hours long. Big movies seem to want to be 3 hours now. WWE PPVs can be nearly 5 hours long.
Who can be interested in *anything* for 4 or 5 hours?
I don’t have a short attention span. I’ll binge a 4-hour mini-series if it intrigues me. I was engrossed in a podcast last night (68 minutes). Give me a ten-page article - or more than ten pages - on the history of the National Wrestling Alliance.
But I feel less is more.
Stephen King will spend what seems like 2-3 pages describing the weeds growing out of a Greyhound bus station. Meanwhile, James Herbert, if he was writing something similar, would have described the bus station’s weeds in one paragraph.
A wrestler will cover a detailed topic in one hour on his podcast episode, covering a lot of history. Meanwhile, Jim Cornette appears to believe people want to hear 4+ hours of his podcast (I know he shares individual clips, but is there anyone on Earth who listens to his episodes in full all of the time?).
Some top movies seem to be going for the 3-hour mark even though it often seems excessive. One film critic stated that Oppenheimer could have shed some weight (I may be paraphrasing). Meanwhile, a 2-hour movie, or even a 90-minute movie, may do a similar theme in a better way.
A Facebook friend of mine is a Christian. She told me her pastor aims for a 25-minute sermon, rarely going over. She then showed me YouTube links of pastors who may do 2 or 3-hour sermons.
It isn’t about attention span. I read John Grisham’s The Firm in less than 2 days because I was hooked. No, for me, it’s about whether something SHOULD be long. As a huge wrestling fan, I believe PPVs should be 3 hours long. 4 hours if it’s a tournament or something. But when you look at your clock and see the PPV has been running for 4 hours 18 minutes, you start to groan.
I’m pretty sure some podcast hosts could cover a topic in an hour. Or 90 minutes. Or two hours maximum (it depends on the topic). But we all have busy lives. I’m sorry, but if a comic artist wants to talk about his work on a particular title, 2 hours 34 is too long. Give it to me in an hour or 90 minutes.
On that note, I think I prefer magazine interviews (with, say, a comic artist) over a podcast. A magazine editor knows he has a limited page/word count, so he’ll ask the relevant questions and it’ll have brevity. But with a podcast, there can be “dead time”, tangents, etc. A podcast host might spend 10 minutes telling you about how his cable provider screwed something up, and at the same time, the USPS delivered the wrong package to his house. And then you realise 15 minutes of the podcast has been airing, and he hasn’t even begun to discuss the subject you’ve tuned in for. You wouldn’t get that in a magazine.