Why 'vertical shorts' for mobile phones are taking off in the entertainment industry

Transcript

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John Yang: These days, most of the video entertainment we watch isn’t at the movies, on television or even on a computer. It’s on a smartphone. To cater to these changing habits, companies, many of them Chinese, are turning out bite sized soap operas for phone viewing. Here again, Ali Rogin.

Ali Rogin: You may have seen the ads on TikTok or Facebook. The plots often involve billionaires, werewolves or sordid affairs. And the dramas unfold in one to two minute increments in the palm of your hand.

Man: You’re the jealous one. Showing up everywhere I go again in the business deals with me.

Ali Rogin: With one cliffhanger after another to entice viewers to continue.

Man: If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re still in love with me.

Ali Rogin: And in the first quarter of 2024, apps like ReelShort and DramaBox raked in $146 million in global revenue outside of China, an 8,000 percent increase over 2023. EJ Dickson is a senior writer at New York Magazine covering culture. EJ, thank you so much for joining us. Walk us through what these micro dramas are and what is the appeal?

EJ Dickson: So they’re called vertical shorts or vertical series and they’re essentially feature length films that are broken down into minute long chunks like the size of your average TikTok video. And the idea is that the viewer will just scroll through them like they do with a TikTok feed and watch the whole thing in one sitting. They’re not intended for consumption like on a laptop or on like a traditional big screen T.V. It’s almost exclusively for mobile consumption.

Ali Rogin: Tell us about how popular this is in China and outside of China. We know that in China it’s a $4.4 billion industry, but how much has the industry grown since it took off there?

EJ Dickson: They’re incredibly popular in China. They sort of took off around the pandemic. And the industry has grown exponentially since then. The biggest market is not in the United States. It’s in countries where people are more likely to consume entertainment on their mobile phones, like India and the Philippines. They have big market share there. But they’re also popular in the United States. I spoke to the CEO of one of these companies, ReelShort, which is kind of like the leading app in this space, and they’re based in Silicon Valley. And he said that they’re pulling in about $10 million in revenue per month, which is pretty staggering.

Ali Rogin: I don’t mean to overgeneralize here, but the content is not exactly, it doesn’t feel Oscar worthy, is that a trademark of this genre and is that something that if it becomes more mainstream, would have to change?

EJ Dickson: I would say not Oscar worthy is a good way of putting it. It’s some of the most abysmal content I’ve ever seen in my life, to be perfectly frank. And when you talk to the actors and the producers and even like the CEO of ReelShort about this, they see that as an asset, like they don’t see the low quality as being detrimental to the success of the platform because they don’t really — they don’t see it as an art form really. I mean, they see it as what it is, which is like algorithmically generated content that has mass cross cultural appeal.

The comparison that the ReelShort CEO made to me when I spoke with him was that it’s like reading “USA Today” instead of like “The Wall Street Journal,” which I think is a somewhat apt comparison. If you’re looking for something artistic and well done, like you’re not going to watch one of these series, if you’re looking for something to distract you on your commute home, then these will be a good option.

Ali Rogin: What are the differences between other sorts of productions and these vertical shorts?

EJ Dickson: It’s hard to answer that, citing just one thing, because the answer is pretty much everything is different than the traditional Hollywood production process. They’re non-union. They also almost exclusively hire directors who are recent graduates of film schools in L.A. and who were born in China so can speak, you know, Mandarin so they can communicate with the CEOs who are largely based in China.

The scripts, I’ve gotten mixed answers about where the scripts come from, including like whether or not they’re written by humans. It’s very much lower budget, very rushed. The production process is totally different than it is in Hollywood. Even though in some cases these shoots are happening like feet away, yards away from like a traditional Hollywood shoot.

Ali Rogin: What’s the payment model? How do people pay to get this content?

EJ Dickson: Typically what happens is somebody will download the app and they advertise heavily on TikTok and Instagram and you’ll swipe through about 15 minutes worth of content or 15, like one minute videos. And then they’ll say if you want five more chapters or if you want to watch five more minutes, you have to pay X amount of money, like $5. So in order to finish one of these series, the user typically has to pay between 25 to $40.

Ali Rogin: Do you anticipate that this is going to continue to grow? Is this what audiences are looking for these days?

EJ Dickson: It’s a great question. I got a lot of mixed answers on that. There are people even within the vertical shorts industry themselves who think this is just a fact. This is a niche thing. This is never going to get traction in mainstream Hollywood. Mainstream Hollywood thinks of this as a joke. But I’ve also heard rumors that pretty big platforms are interested in getting into this genre.

I think that what we’ve learned over the past five years with the streaming wars and with the strikes and, you know, all the obstacles that Hollywood has had to overcome is that Hollywood underestimates this type of digital content, this type of innovative digital content at its own peril.

Ali Rogin: EJ Dixon, covering culture for New York Magazine, thank you so much for your insights.