Commentary

Small Subjects: What's Behind Neflix's Little Experiment

When I was in junior high school, the lunch period was divided into two 28-minute periods--one for lunch, the other for a study hall or some other diversion to get kids out of the cafeteria. One of those ways was a movie in the auditorium that was shown, 20 minutes at a time, over the course of the week. That’s where I went.

Looking back at it now, I don’t think this butchery was sanctioned by the Motion Picture Association of America, unless suburban Cleveland, Ohio, was a hotbed of cinematic experimentation and I didn’t know it.  

Now, decades later, I’m thinking of it because Netflix reportedly has plans to test new, short-length features. It’s a brilliant idea, I say, as this experiment just starts. Netflix the Lesser fits right in with the collision of content lengths. The commercials are getting longer as the content has gotten shorter, or as in the Red Bull TV YouTube channel, they’ve become the same thing.

Gigagom is reporting Netflix’s impending move into shortness. But alas, unlike the two-hour movie split four or five bite-size pieces of my youth, it looks more like Netflix is thinking of using its short porch for movie promos or highlights from feature films in the library. But that’s now. Maybe it can chop up movies into pieces, too.

In some tests, Netflix is asking mobile users of its app, “Have five minutes?” and then pitching short-form featurettes. That “five-minute” lead-in has some significance. Gigaom reports that Netflix’s researchers found that 87% of mobile video experiences last less than 10 minutes, but Netflix didn’t have much on the shelf that played that way. So now, it’s trying to supply it. After you’ve found your seat on the bus, Netflix wants the rest of your time.

Data Nielsen released just yesterday shows that on average, users are now watching 1 hour and 41 minutes of video on smartphones every week, up from 1 hour and 9 minutes just a year ago. 

But maybe that stat misses a bigger picture, literally. As the entertainment industry resizes itself with short, YouTube videos and longer, story-like commercials, the smartphone is also getting larger.

Shipments of phablets -- with screens between 5.5 and 6.9 inches -- will surpass shipments of laptops this year and, amazingly, surpass shipments of tablets next year, Cnet reported last week. (It would be nice if the Consumer Electronics Association joined with the powerful Hemline Arbiters Association and faltering Tie-Width Masters to coordinate things, but I’m a dreamer like that.) 

Cnet quotes stats from International Data Corp. that shows this year, manufacturers will ship 175 million phablets and 170 million PCs. Next year, 318 million phablets will be shipped, surpassing 233 million tablets. The new, larger screen Apple iPhones will help phablets control about a third of the smartphone market by 2018.

Sizing up (sorry for the inevitable pun, but that’s why they call it inevitable), if those statistics are near to being correct, either Netflix will be shown to be really smart by beginning its short-form testing now-- or foolhardy because the slightly-bigger screen will now be just perfect for longer views. We’ll see, um, shortly. (Sorry again.)


pj@mediapost.com
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