In Conversation: What is Quality Content?
The abundance of content is overwhelming. There are massive amounts of movies, TV shows and webseries out there on multiple platforms, we almost don’t know where to look.
As graduate students about to enter into the competitive media industry, we are struggling with the desire to produce good content, but also make money and survive in this cutthroat environment. This led to a conversation with Ayelen Barrios, one of my classmates, in an attempt to answer the question of subjectivity: what is good quality content?
Sam: So subjectivity. How do you judge ‘quality’ content?
Ash: I try to vary my viewing pleasures, and sometimes I watch things that people love and I just don’t get it, sometimes I agree. Sometimes I love something and I know it’s not great. I think my quality metre comes on whether something let’s me think or keeps me wondering what is going to happen next.
Sam: I agree. I feel like for me, there are three categories: ‘good’ content that I watch, ‘bad’ content that I watch (or the guilty pleasures), and ‘bad’ content that I don’t watch. The thing is, networks and content producers can’t tell the difference between the shows that I think are good or bad, they only know if I’m watching it or not. Ultimately that’s all they care about if we think of it as a business.
Ash: Which I guess is both a good and bad thing. On one end it wouldn’t be fair for something to be cancelled because it’s not quality but at the same time there are many gems that get unnoticed and cancelled too soon.
Sam: So why do you think that is? If these shows are truly quality, why aren’t more people watching them? When Jocelyn Hamilton from eOne Television came to our class this week, she said something that stuck out to me. She pushed to make a show that she thought was good quality television, but nobody watched it because it didn’t fit with the network’s brand, not story-wise but aesthetically. Something as simple as camera set-up can make someone change the channel. I wonder how that kind of branding will change with predominantly non-linear viewing.
Ash: That’s an interesting point. I’m not quite sure what the answer is, I do appreciate when networks give a show a second chance. When a good show is able to land a second or third season because someone in the network has faith that’s always a good thing. Sometimes audiences need time to find a show. With the advent of streaming these shows may find life after the show has aired. That being said you’re right, sometimes no matter how good the show is, it simply can’t find an audience.
Sam: Being able to binge watch a show changes the game. There are shows on Netflix that I have zipped through just because I can, but I don’t like them enough to have to wait a week to watch the next episode. This might lower the ‘quality’ threshold.
Ash: That’s so interesting becuase there are defineately movies where I think I want to watch that but not enough to pay a movie ticket for, so I’ll wait for it to be on an on demand service. So movie studios and television studios need to try harder to catch my attention. Which is probably a good thing since it raises the quality. For something to be watched it needs to be good. Does that mean quality is intriguing enough to “always” keep me coming? Cause this would differ from something liek art quality that may not be so addicting but rather retrospective.
Sam: That makes sense, I agree with you about the movie prices. I think that makes on-demand services a good thing for low budget movies or box office flops because there is potential for viewership and revenue outside of the theatrical experience. I feel like this is a good opportunity for studios to really think about which movies they want to bring to theatres. There are some movies that benefit from big screen viewing, and others that don’t need it so much. So instead of putting money and effort into pushing every movie to theatres, they can use the same resources to promote them on on-demand services.
Ash: Yes! Instead of trying to compete with on demand services, studios should try to use on demand services to their advantage. I do think there’s a place for both services to exist, we perhaps just haven’t figured out what that looks like yet.
Sam: Ya, instead of seeing them as a threat they should think of it as more of a partnership. What seems to be the big thing that everyone is looking for is ultimately good quality content.
Ash: Even if that means different things to different people.
