Netflix Rolls Out Playback Speed Control—So Who’s The Real Director During Our Ambient TV Era?

This past summer it was reported Netflix
NFLX
was experimenting with the ability to control the playback of any show or film— from 0.5x slower to 1.5x faster.

While the feature was primarily tested on Android mobile devices, the feature is now being spotted on desktops across the country.

The creative community has been pushing back since the rumors. Judd Apatow, an outspoken critic, replied to the early headlines, ”Distributors don’t get to change the way the content is presented. Doing so is a breaking of trust and won’t be tolerated by the people who provide it.” He added, “Don’t make me have to call every director and show creator on Earth to fight you on this. Save me the time.”

Aaron Paul also joined early, “There is NO WAY Netflix will move forward with this. That would mean they are completely taking control of everyone else’s art and destroying it. Netflix is far better than that. Am I right Netflix?…I love Netflix. Always have. Always will. This simply can not be true.”

It is.

Paul’s tweet is now unavailable and close to 195,000,000 Netflix subscribers will soon be getting a taste of this control.

In a previous statement from Netflix, Keela Robison, VP of Product Innovation, justified the test, “It’s a feature that has long been available on DVD players – and has been frequently requested by our members. For example, people looking to rewatch their favorite scene or wanting to go slower because it’s a foreign language title.”

The context of controlling speed on a DVD player is different than our present moment. Culture changes. We’re in a market landscape where Netflix infamously “competes with sleep” in addition to now HBO, Hulu, Apple and Disney. This is about being able to better understand a foreign film as much as it’s about crunching more consumption numbers for shareholders. “Are you still there?”

How do you increase viewership metrics quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year? Approaching the equation by attempting to increase subscribers is myopic. Saturation is tough. You also can’t increase the time frame for people to watch Netflix, there are only so many hours in the day. But what you can do, and what Netflix has done, is shrink the content to fit more of it within subscribers’ existing time frames. Same timespan each night, but more content watched… all without growing subscription numbers. Brilliant… for the stock.

Netflix is signaling: Consumption volume is prioritized over artistic intent. What’s disturbing yet unsurprising is that we’ve mistaken the figure for the ground. Where metrics were once leveraged to understand the resonance of a piece of work, we’re now solely optimizing for the metrics themselves, forgetting why we’re here. We’re undermining the material for stats. Have we really experienced the work, or have we merely seen it?

For Team Human, author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff shares, “Any art that asks its viewers to slow down or, worse, pause and reflect is hurting a market that depends on automatic and accelerating behaviors.” Netflix doesn’t want to play in the slow and ambiguous space. However for the creatives, it’s the deal with the devil.

This figure-ground reversal is what Apatow and Paul are concerned about. The distributor, Netflix, now controls the priority: numbers over art. This means Netflix also controls the watch experience—or at least empowers viewers to control their own watch experience, different than that of what was intended. Fairly, who are we to make such directorial decisions over Apatow, the creator? If he wanted a shorter film, his editors would have done so. And as any fan knows, that’s not what Apatow wants.

The trigger for all is that we’re beginning to widely remix an established and sacred medium: film. The chaotic spirit of TikTok is getting mapped onto the nearly 100-year-old Motion Picture Association. Or better yet, YouTube’s existing playback controls can now be applied to a Best Picture.

This is 2020—power dynamics are changing. The crowd now determines if Sonic the Hedgehog gets re-animated, or which actors get canceled. Further, with the pandemic, films like Wonder Woman 1984 are bypassing bottleneck theaters and hitting laptops first. In this relationship, it means Sam gets to decide how they want to view the blockbuster: on their iPhone or at 1.5x the speed. After all, they are the one paying. No one needs to flash their B.A. in Cinematic Arts from USC to sign up for Netflix.

Defenders of the feature flaunt the benefits for the deaf and blind community, in addition to many others requiring such accessibility options. Longer time to read subtitles, or quickened audio for those who can’t see well, allows freedom. It’s applaudable and overdue. But can this truly be the fundamental motivator? Netflix wouldn’t have first tested on Android, but first fostered a PR-worthy partnership with the American Council of the Blind. Or at least that’s how they should have framed it.

This feature also signals what television’s role is in the zeitgeist. Markets once proclaimed the arrival of “Second Screen Viewing”, where phone screens accompanied the big screen and acted as the outlet for Tweet reactions and live group chats. However, there’s been another reversal. The TV is now the second screen. The real attention is on the phone: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube is the foreground. Netflix’s Emily In Paris, dubbed Ambient TV, runs in the background. Many approach their Netflix shows as they would a digital Yule Log, a calming stream of colors and sounds to fill the void.

“At its core, Ambient TV is about modulating our split attention,” says Sean Monahan, founder of the new trend consultancy 8Ball formerly of K-HOLE. “Speeding up certain content for focused turbo-ingestion or lowering the complexity of plot so it can be more ambient background noise are two sides of the same coin. Split attention isn’t only a workplace problem. We also multitask while we consume entertainment.”

Our debate shouldn’t be about the speed and length of an Apatow film, but what Ambient TV and a speed feature symbolizes: our content glut, and how we can’t seem to escape it. Every nook and cranny is filled with content. We multiply our screens to get through.

Entertainment—or even better, art—is now framed as a task to complete hastily, defeating its primary purpose: timeless escape. Our watchlists have become Sisyphean. There is no progress. Yet there’s still a mirage of completion. Our new 1.5x speed can get us there. Or so we hope.

What we need is a movement, a figure or organization, to declare: we don’t need to watch, read or listen to it all. This is that early and modest rallying call.

We are suffocating in content, all competing for our attention—family, friends and co-workers meanwhile attempt to prioritize the list on our behalf, only making it worse. Completed content has become our all-access social pass. Your opportunities for conversation accumulate as hours slept shrink.

But are we watching because we want to or because we feel compelled to?

If we’re watching at 1.5x speed, missing nuance and timing all while disrespecting the creator, perhaps we truly don’t want to. And that’s okay.


Speak Your Mind

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Get in Touch

350FansLike
100FollowersFollow
281FollowersFollow
150FollowersFollow

Recommend for You

Oh hi there 👋
It’s nice to meet you.

Subscribe and receive our weekly newsletter packed with awesome articles that really matters to you!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

You might also like

Warren Buffett: 3 Daily Habits That Separate the Doers...

Outside of Warren Buffett's mastery of investing, you have to agree that his simple life...

Nasdaq Rebounds As Tech Stocks Stabilize After Rout

U.S. stocks bounced on Wednesday with the Nasdaq gaining 1.5%, as a rout in...

Council Post: Fire Your Public-Equity Fund Manager, But Find...

Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Scale-Up VC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm based in...

They’re Desperate For More Revenue, But Travel Companies And...

Roadside hotels like this one are leading the painfully...