Television, Hyper Attention, and Media Companies’ Exploitation

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Companion Screens > Television, Hyper Attention, and Media Companies' Exploitation

Studies examining hyper attention while watching television treat companion screens as a branch of mixed media engagement in the home. that there are three types of ‘second screen applications’ while watching TV: focusing only on television, even if another device is nearby; ‘confounding’ watching TV with another screen like a phone or laptop; and finally, ‘confounding’ TV watching with a range of media including print. The study found that there was less interest, among TV viewers, in releasing this hyper attentiveness and using their phones to engage more directly with the program through online discussions or specific apps. Arguably, as television and now online media have become the dominant forms of entertainment, hyper attention is now the main method of engaging any media, and the primary expectation from it.

Theatre makers and academics typically treat television : ‘As discussed earlier, distraction can be conceived as a central fact of the televisual experience, with the disattentive viewer able to follow the broadcast flow through the recognition of deeply engrained conventions and expectations’. Matthew Reason here argues that archival films of theatre productions, made to promote deep attention like many live performance works, treat the viewer differently compared to the hectic pace of the original television experience which involved small segments of a show interspersed with advertising.

The nature of current television viewing which , especially as entire seasons are released at once onto streaming services, has further encouraged hyper attention: ‘Factors salient for regular bingers are relaxation, engagement, and hedonism. For those who plan ahead to binge, program quality (aesthetics) and the communal aspect (social) also come into play'. The social aspect of bingeing involves both the need to stay up to date on culturally relevant productions (Tiger King season 1 as the 2020 breakout hit, for instance), but also to socialise during viewing by chatting in group chats or social media. Thus, television programming itself is no longer the cause of distracted viewing or hyper attention, : ‘In turn, this raises questions about how such second-screen activity might change television viewing habits, how fans and producers inhabit and adapt to this new space of potential engagement, and whether the most intense and productive of such intersections between broadcast and social media may come to create entirely new media practices, texts, and genres’.

Distracted attention has also been a consistent part of the domestic space. Thus television, when paired with meals, family chatter, homework, chores, and other home-based experiences, while encouraging auditory attention rather than pure visual attention: ‘Linked to this notion of intimacy, critics argued that sound generally played a greater role in television than it did in the cinema. This is not just because the cinema screen is bigger and therefore able to offer more in the way of visual detail and spectacle; it is because television also has to compete with the distractions of the domestic space’. Even when a television viewer might have full quiet in their solo apartment, they can distract themselves without bothering others as they might in a public space like a cinema or theatre - which may have contributed to the rise of companion screen use.

Although some companies, like Netflix, are attempting methods of integrating companion screens into their programming to force viewers’ focus, television has generally formatted itself around being a companion in a distracting space that requires multitasking. Theatre makers pre-pandemic tried to fight off the incursion of digital devices into the performance space as a way of encouraging or even forcing deep attention (whether this worked or not is certainly up for debate); now that digital theatre has offered solutions for theatre makers to engage their audiences in the domestic sphere through streaming or even interactive shows, there is a different competition for attention. However, dramaturgically integrating these distractions (like smartphones) can encourage a deep attention more akin to viewing a performance in a theatre space.