More and more TV show are meant to be "a background"

The algorithms of major social networks are designed to offer users a continuous flow of personalized content that is similar and uninterrupted, in order to keep people on the feed as long as possible. This consumption model is known as doomscrolling: many developers who have implemented some of the most popular platforms have admitted to designing it to create a form of addiction. This activity responds to a series of unconscious psychological mechanisms, one of which is automaticity: scrolling has become such a habitual gesture that stopping it can sometimes be difficult. As a result, many users end up staying on social media feeds for hours, often even while performing other activities. For several years, experts have been fully aware of this phenomenon, to the point that it has also influenced the writing of various new television series. More and more productions are now being conceived with the knowledge that many viewers will follow them while browsing social media feeds. But essentially, how can one tell if a TV series adopts this approach or not? A television product is generally defined as "second screen" (named in contrast to the "first screen," which, in this case, is the smartphone) when dialogues are deliberately written to ensure that viewers do not lose track of the story. Conversations, for instance, tend to be very didactic. Similarly, recaps of what has happened so far are quite frequent, while descriptions of actions are very (perhaps too) detailed. Another technique used is having characters anticipate plot developments. All of these strategies are designed precisely to facilitate viewers distracted by their smartphones.

How TV Series Are Changing

This trend is a direct consequence of an increasingly widespread practice called casual viewing: it consists of using a certain type of content (usually deliberately non-demanding TV series or a video essay on YouTube) as background entertainment while performing other routine activities—from household chores to preparing a meal, or simply relaxing on the couch while doomscrolling. According to industry media reports, the writing of many films and TV series produced by major market players takes casual viewing into account. However, this approach has consequences: the tendency to make stories more easily consumable often results in an abundance of banal and predictable narratives, along with shallow and unsophisticated characters. As a result, many series in the catalogs of major platforms end up resembling each other, offering a form of generally poor storytelling. Some critics consider this evolution to be degrading, viewing it as a decline in television content quality. Others, however, argue that it is reasonable for certain scripts—especially those aimed at the general audience—to adapt to viewers' habits.

In this sense, platforms are merely responding to the new ways content is consumed by most of the audience, who more frequently watch TV series while interacting with their smartphones. In some cases, viewers also tend to appreciate a television product that can be easily followed without effort—with a form of “intermittent attention.” The fact remains that adopting mechanisms that make viewing more accessible is not entirely new. Some famous productions in the past have already employed similar strategies, anticipating what has now become a predominant model. A significant example is The Sopranos, where Tony’s psychotherapy sessions provided distracted viewers with a recap of key events in the series. Another example of this narrative strategy can be found in House M.D.: the protagonist would think aloud and discuss his deductions with the team. Each episode contained moments summarizing the possible diagnoses, making it easy for anyone to pick up the storyline almost effortlessly—even for those who missed parts of the episode. All of this partly demonstrates that the need for scripts accommodating various levels of attention is not necessarily exclusive to streaming but, in some ways, is linked to viewing habits that may have existed before due to the fragmentation of the television audience, yet have only fully emerged recently.