These days, most of the video entertainment we watch isn't at the movies on television or even on a computer.

It's on a smartphone.

To cater to these changing habits, companies, many of them Chinese, are turning out bite-sized soap operas for phone viewing.

Here again, Ali Rogan.

You may have seen the ads on TikTok or Facebook.

The plots often involve billionaires, werewolves, or sordid affairs,

and the dramas unfold in one to two minute increments in the palm of your hand.

You're the jealous one.

Showing up everywhere I go, getting in the business deals with me.

With one cliffhanger after another to entice viewers to continue.

If I don't know any better, I'd say you're still in love with me.

And in the first quarter of 2024, apps like Reels Short and Drama Box

raked in $146 million in global revenue outside of China, an 8,000 percent increase over 2023.

E.J. Dixon is a senior writer at New York Magazine covering culture.

E.J., thank you so much for joining us. Walk us through what these microdramas are,

and what is the appeal? So they're called vertical shorts or vertical series, and they're

essentially feature-length films that are broken down into

minute-long chunks, like the size of your average TikTok video.

And the idea is that the viewer will just scroll through them like they do with a TikTok feed

and watch the whole thing in one sitting.

They're not intended for consumption, like on a laptop or on like a traditional big screen TV.

It's almost exclusively for mobile consumption.

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