How the industry became vertically challenged
By Nico Franks
04-12-2025
If the content people consume on public transport is any indication of where the entertainment business is heading then this year’s Content London could help raise the bar.
I am obsessed with what people are watching on public transport. Luckily, living in London, I am afforded plenty of opportunities to snoop on the weird and not-so-wonderful things the person next to me is YouTubing on the tube.
You may well have noticed it on your way to Kings Place this morning. But whereas most people bemoan the abrasive sound of someone else’s device broadcasting rage bait or AI-generated pseudo-true crime from YouTube Shorts, TikTok or Facebook to an entire carriage, I can’t help but try to decipher what they’re watching. Inevitably, a few seconds go by and a dissatisfied swipe of their thumb throws another piece of brainrot up and my rubbernecking efforts begin anew.
Jack Conte, CEO at membership platform Patreon, recently published a video op-ed on The New York Times YouTube channel titled I’m Building an Algorithm That Doesn’t Rot Your Brain, the latest in his campaign to tidy up the internet to better serve creatives and audiences, rather than tech bros.
Ironically, I came across his video via an algorithm, but Conte makes a good point about tech companies “prioritising short-term fixation over long-term connection, because they value ad revenue over our humanity.”
You can’t say we weren’t warned. Anyone who was at Content London 2024 will remember media analyst Adam Cunningham telling delegates to prepare for a tidal wave of “AI slop” on social media as the “enshittification” of the internet continued.
It is now a novelty to see someone watching something on BBC iPlayer, Netflix or Disney+ on-the-go – something that really got me down about the future of our industry earlier this year. However, I then realised that on-the-go viewing has never been a core part of the TV business model, which remains focused on the home, which gave me hope.
And then the microdrama craze hit.
This year started with a report that Netflix has been telling its showrunners to dumb down content (a claim the streamer denied) by making plots easier to understand for viewers ‘watching’ as they doomscroll. Now microdrama platforms are here to solve that problem by bringing us content with all the plot depth of a soft porn video.
Of course, it’s easy to be sniffy about titles such as Pregnant by My Ex’s Dad, Stripper Nanny and Selling My Virginity to the Mafia King. As far as I can tell, most microdramas are being written by a version of ChatGPT trained solely on clickbait and tabloid-style magazines like Chat or Take a Break.
I’m not saying a microdrama can’t be high-quality. It’s just I haven’t seen one that is yet. Maybe that will have changed by the end of this year’s Content London, which hosted its first microdrama script competition on Tuesday, potentially marking the moment the bar began to be raised.
On this page yesterday, my colleague Michael Pickard tipped his hat to Welsh-language broadcaster S4C’s Yr Alwad (The Call), made for its social media channel Hansh, which suggests it is possible for pubcasters to add substance to the format. So far, however, the trend has largely felt like a race to the bottom. In more ways than one.
With 2025 the year many broadcasters and distributors finally embraced YouTube and started uploading full episodes, perhaps my tube journeys will once again be filled with the reassuring sound of Morgan Freeman, rather than an eerie AI-assisted impersonation.
But if you want to see the future of mass media consumption, head to India, as C21 did this year for our inaugural Content India conference, which returns to Mumbai on March 16-18 next year. AI-made microdramas – a distant prospect not so long ago – are already launching on premium streaming services like JioHotstar (co-owned by Disney). And, perhaps thankfully for the future of our industry, they are not being well received.
On Reddit, comments included “This is AI slop. Yikes” and “This is just disrespectful to literally everyone.” Nevertheless, with India enjoying some of the lowest mobile data costs globally, you can be sure plenty of AI-made content (plus cricket) will be soundtracking train rides from Agra to Zirakpur.
Meanwhile, while it can be tempting to focus on TV’s diminishing returns, the past 12 months have cemented the return of the shared cultural moment in the UK, whether it was the Gavin & Stacey finale or The Traitors on the BBC. Fantastic TV with mass appeal continues to get made.
And if that ends, perhaps we can all retrain as intimacy coordinators in anticipation of the Golden Age of the Microdrama.
