It's pitch day in the writers room of this streaming original. Laptops come to life. Green teas and black coffees are brought in. Colour-coded sticky notes peep out of scripts fresh out of oven. The suits enter, smiles are flashed, and customary corporate pep talk is passed around. An hour or so later, after the first draft is presented, the markers and highlighters are taken out. There's one term that stands out of the feedback - "not second screen enough." Raised eyebrows are met with the clarification, "Make it more ambient." After the suits leave, it's upto the head writer to translate the memo: "Would the viewer still watch our show if they're on their phones?" "No, it demands attention." "Exactly, that's the issue, folks. Let's dumb it down." What is ambient television? New Yorker observed this concept of ambient viewing first with Emily in Paris, Darren Star's hit Netflix show which dropped in 2020 after the onset of the pandemic. Audience across the globe, sitting at home during lockdowns, escaped doomscrolling by befriending Emily Cooper, a young American social media geek navigating the far more traditional and culturally diametric fashion industry of Paris. But Emily was not the friend who snatched your smartphone away and demanded attention. In fact, she was the pal who could be relegated to the background whenever needed and called upon whenever pleased. She was "as ignorable as interesting." She was the ideal white noise. She was ambient. She was the second screen. As the audience in India too have come to embrace this form of ambient viewing, streaming platforms have begun to take notice and reverse-engineer the scripts for their shows and films accordingly. Sample the likes of Call Me Bae (Prime Video India), Home Shanti (Jio Hotstar), Jamnapaar (Amazon MiniTV), Maamla Legal Hai (Netflix India) or the more recent, Dupahiya (Prime Video India). These are feel-good shows with a clear potential of packing in more nuance and pace. But it almost feels like they're not allowed to be smarter because there's an expectation that they'll be consumed in the background. The viewer is still watching, even if they're not. They're no longer even bothering with wolfing down the show at 2x. They're just letting it glide by in the background as they treat their smartphones as the first screen. Does it matter that they're tuning out? Not in measuring the number of hours watched. But what about the quality of content? Dumb it down: The trajectory of OTT content While most writers haven't yet been briefed directly to write for the second screen, there have been many struggling writers who have been told that their scripts aren't conducive to ambient viewing. "I've been told that too. And I said, 'Thank God!,'" quips Sumukhi Suresh, head of Motormouth Writers, a content creation company. "Honestly, I've been told that and I have taken it as a compliment," adds Sumukhi, who believes the makers realise her debut show Pushpavalli (Prime Video India) "was obviously not very second screen." But what about the writers yet to establish themselves? What if they're told their shows are not 'dumbed down' enough that they can be consumed in the background? "When streaming platforms first hit the scene, we were told to write content that made the audience 'lean in.' From there, it shifted to writing “snackable content” (can be watched on the go, subject matter is light). Now we’re working within a vertical format (two-minute episodes). Through this, we can see the evolution of writing going towards shows that can be watched with little engagement," says another screenwriter, who's been working in the comedy and slice-of-life genres for nine years, on the condition of anonymity. "While I haven't been asked directly to write something that can be played in the background, the notes we receive from executives are directed towards 'dumbing down' your writing as much as you can to reach a 'wider audience,'" adds Shreemi Verma, creative producer and writer of shows like Industry (Amazon MiniTV). "There is a continuous heavy talk on making the writing more 'accessible' by vocalising in scenes, almost unnecessarily. There is also a bunch of chatter in all meetings about where audience drops out in an episode, or just generally how to 'structure' it so that it's easy to take in. While this happens, the direct order of writing it like a second screen show is only one step away," says Sudeep Nigam, writer of shows like Avrodh (SonyLIV), Ranneeti (Jio Hotstar), Buried Truth: The Indrani Mukherjea Story and The Indian Predator (Netflix India). However, Ria Chopra, 26, writer and content creator, insists that while the ask may be unreasonable, it's not emerging from a vacuum. "Streaming services have been very quick to respond to viewership trends. For example, the second they started realising people like to watch full seasons in one go, they began feeding their viewers with binge-watches. They weren't doing it out of thin air. Their data showed that's what consumer behaviour was indicating," argues Ria. Diminishing attention spans Sudeep does agree the diminishing attention spans are inevitable now. "Today, people can't watch a film in a theatre without looking at the phone, they can't watch anything at home without talking or pressing pause, and can't spend an hour without looking at their phones. There is very limited patience left for anything to engage you, and there is continuous overloading of information to not allow anything to stay with you," he adds. "A show like Severance - I love it - but there are some days when I'm like, this requires too much mental focus to watch. Sometimes you want entertainment that allows your mind to wander without being 'punished' for it. Which, itself, is not a problem. The problem is what do we do the moment our minds wander in 2025 – which is pull out our phones," says Azeem Banatwalla, a stand-up comedian, who's introduced a screen in his ongoing tour to stimulate the audience collectively, instead of catching them peeping into their phones. "The average time that we can focus on a single thing is at an all-time low in human history, especially for younger people. And that is the audience that comprises the majority of the viewership of streaming platforms," says Ria. She argues that the attention crisis caused by the Fear Of Missing Out and constant need for stimulation isn't exclusive to streaming content, but even bears an impact on Instagram Reels themselves. "You may have noticed Reels in which the top half is a Subway Surfer stream being played and the bottom half is the actual content. That's practically second-screen viewing happening on the same screen. Somehow, younger people need two vastly different inputs to keep their attention on one single piece for a longer period of time," adds Ria. OTT streamers competition is. Instagram But that doesn't imply that one paints all shows with the same brush. "Some platforms are now focussing on creating 2-3 minute episodes in order to compete with Instagram Reels. It's important to adapt. But it'll be dumb to only focus on 3-minute episodes and stop making the 40-minute ones just because the former is the easy way out. I just think there's space for everything, but the suits tend to forget the value and importance of a well made show over an easily made show. Balancing both should be the ideal way ahead, but that seems like a utopian thought," says Shreemi. "Why waste hard work on good content which could be high risk because art is subjective, when you can make average and bad content and market it smartly," says a former Netflix India employee. Shreemi says that the idea of being a creative person is to adapt to the changing times. But Sudeep points out that not all screenwriters are equipped to deal with this shift in approach. "I don't think screenwriters train to write for the second screen or the ambience. And I don't think there is a vetted mechanism that helps you acquire the skillset either. So how are we expected to adapt to it out of the blue?" Pooja Tolani, writer of Konkona Sensharma's segment The Mirror in Netflix India anthology Lust Stories 2 (2023), sees the concept of white noise writing as an assault on the writer's identity. "The idea of second screen viewing is a tad bit humiliating, and demotivating. The writing takes so much hard work, and also putting in pieces of your own lives and experiences, your blood and tears, your own fears and insecurities. Doing that for people to be barely watching, is not something any writer would be happy doing," she says. Supriya Prasad Rauniar, writer and producer, feels ambient writing is just another excuse for studios to greenlight less expensive, safe, and mediocre content. "It's an excuse not to experiment, and also not give writers the time needed. If a Game of Thrones takes four years to write and it takes 14 writers to write an episode of Friends, how do you expect a writer or two to write a full season in two to four months," she asks, adding, "This reverse psychology is completely bullsh*t. If you have a good show, why won't they keep their phones on silent and immerse themselves in that? If you spot something exciting happening on the street, you do look away from your phone. It's how human psychology works, right? If you're aiming lower, how are you going to make anything nice? You're just looking it as a by-product." Good content wins, watch Adoloscence Sudeep agrees and reasons, "Opening doors to ambient writing or second screen content is like opening a Pandora's box which is going to push us towards a larger attention deficit en masse, and will become like a slow poison for the long history of storytelling itself. The audience viewing patterns have changed considerably, and the need for such form of writing arises somewhat from there. It's being distilled to creators like a prescription, but then, no good work ever happened by following such prescriptions," he says. "I understand the logic behind making 'brainrot' content as most people who switch their TVs on are tired, already on their phones, distracted or fatigued," says Shreemi, quick to add, "But everyone remembers and rewatches Breaking Bad. Not a lot of people tune into Riverdale for a re-watch. Unless they're high." Dumbing down of shows or using loud background score to indicate plot twists have been happening with daily soaps for years. Before the 'Tudum' on Netflix, there was a 'Dhudum-Dhudum-Dhudum' in daily soaps to alert the homemaker who was probably away, in the kitchen, to return to her TV set. But with the Gen-Z as the core audience on streaming platforms, they've begun to surrender themselves to smartphone distractions instead of fighting them. "It's a resignation to the times we're living in. In an ideal scenario, we shouldn't be writing to accommodate the lack of attention. We should be writing well enough to get that attention," argues Pooja. Groundbreaking shows like Adolescence on Netflix (30 million+ views and counting) and The White Lotus (Jio Hotstar) demonstrate that slow-burn shows continue to perform well because they don't discount the audience's intelligence or lack of capacity to engage. Ria feels shows like these may help streamers realise writing for the second screen is as fickle a must-follow trend as binge-watching. "We've seen streaming services hop on to trends for a few years and then backtrack. Like they were big on binge-watching once, but now the biggest shows like Game of Thrones, The White Lotus, and Severance are dropping weekly episodes. Even in this case, second-screen writing is something that's happening now, so streaming services are catering to it. But they'll soon realise that if the audience can look at their phones, why can't they watch Amazon Prime instead of Netflix? The feedback is already coming in. Look at Nadaaniyan, not a lot of investment has gone into making it, and people are saying it's not great. Things have a way of balancing themselves on the internet and in the entertainment space. So they will, I'd say give it four to five years," she adds. Also Read - Screenwriter Anjum Rajabali says producers ‘treat stars like nawabs’: Big stars have 12-13 spotboys, even their drivers are paid, but no surety writers will get their fee But Supriya maintains ambient writing is not a trend, but yet another excuse for streamers to not invest in good shows. "Every executive is operating from a point of fear. They don't have the belief, the conviction. I know few of my friends who have written really good shows which are doing the rounds in production houses, but I wonder why they're just sitting idle while a Nadaaniyan is being made," she says, adding, "In America or Europe, they put their money where their mouth is, and invest enough money and time on every show. The writer isn't recognized and respected here. It comes to the economics, but also how much belief the studio has in you and your story."
