The Ross and Rachel Microdrama Is Coming

Short and sweet — that’s how younger audiences increasingly discover their next film or TV show.

Deloitte found last year that 53 percent of Gen Z and millennials say they get better viewing recommendations from social media than from streaming services.

“That might be a trailer or a clip that the studio or the streaming platform puts out,” says Hub Entertainment Research principal Jon Giegengack. “But very often it’s a clip or a reaction video or a review from a creator.”

Studios have learned to play this game themselves in a couple distinct ways. Several discreetly operate genre-specific accounts with generic names like “Crime Clips” (not an actual channel — no one I’ve spoken with would cite specific examples). These astroturf accounts don’t telegraph their corporate backing, but studios use them to monetize back catalogs and — more crucially — to promote series and films audiences then have to go to a streamer to watch in full.

Studios also pay accounts and creators to post trailers and clips, often with reactions attached. Specialized clipping agencies that have become fixtures in Hollywood over the last year get paid to flood the zone. This summer saw clipping campaigns for Avengers: Doomsday’s initial trailer and Amazon’s Prime Video series Spider-Noir and Ride or Die, among many others.

All of this underscores a fundamental reality: Younger audiences require bite-sized clips for engagement — the kind Hollywood has spent years sending onto somebody else’s feed. Now the streamers want the feed for themselves.

Which is why the latest front in the streaming wars is happening vertically — and inside the streamers’ own apps.

In April, Netflix added a vertical video feed called Clips to its mobile app, after similar attempts fizzled in 2018 and 2021. In May, Prime Video debuted its own vertical feed — also called Clips. In June, it was Peacock. Also in this spring’s frenzy: Disney+, with Verts, and Paramount+, which notably didn’t bother with a cutesy name. Last month, HBO Max got in on the action with a feed called Shorts. Each is prominent in its app’s interface, on the bottom navigation bar or a couple scrolls down.

Six streamers, six months.

But vertical doesn’t end there. Peacock has a smattering of microdramas, including Do Not Disturb: Lady Boss in Disguise! and 30 Days Till I Marry My Husband’s Nemesis. Paramount+ plans to add microdramas, Business Insider reported. And Disney just announced an arrangement with TikTok: Creators can opt in to use Disney characters and scenes in their own short-form videos, which then live on both TikTok and Disney+ Verts.

Quickplay builds streaming technology for media companies, including the vertical feeds themselves. Its chief business officer, Paul Pastor, a former exec at Disney and Discovery, calls clips the “front porch” — the way to get viewers in the door and settled on the couch for something longer.

Now feeds built within streaming apps maximize engagement inside the app — supplementing, and potentially competing with, the long-form catalog behind them.

Streamers now can own the front porch, and the build-out is something Hollywood is at the beginning of figuring out.

Below, I unpack what’s happening, including:

• One crazy stat: why 78 percent of all streaming time explains the whole phenomenon
• The millions of long-form viewing minutes one streamer says its short-form feed is already generating
• How AI decides which moments of a show are funny, emotional — or too sexy to clip
• Why no streamer will share its conversion numbers
• Why the entire experiment may hinge on one surprisingly stubborn behavior: turning your phone sideways
• How Ross and Rachel could become their own microdrama