May 16, 2007
'Seven minutes' is the new "War and Peace
The AP has met up with Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson in his office on campus, the man I would most like to listen to. He's head of the Center For The Study of Popular Television and a man quoted so many times in the press, that some news organizations (including The Associated Press) have lately tried consciously NOT to quote him.
In his class, he teaches the history of television and by the end of his three hour lecture, he talks about society's current fixation on YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site.
And one lesson from that, he notes, is how our collective attention span has shrunk. We can't watch a YouTube clip that's more than a few minutes long. To prove it, he plays a tedious clip of someone's pet cat playing the piano. 'Seven minutes,' another Thompson-ism goes, 'is the new 'War and Peace.'' [via The TV Barn Ticker]
Previously: - Robert Thompson on "Weeds" and "Dexter".
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