Dullsville

People of Hollywood, brace yourselves—the kids are bored. Yes, according to the Los Angeles Times, the 12-to-24-year-olds, what advertisers probably call the “middle-aged” audience, feel under-entertained.

Before your first teardrop hits your hankie, don’t forget, that’s an age range when all of us claim to be bored—the age when we first stare at an open, full refrigerator and say, “There’s nothing to eat here!”

Still, I think this is partially a product of what we in the Biz have been up to for the last fifty years or so. We’ve learned that, the more conflict in a script, the more people will watch.

So, in a comedy, instead of Rob and Laura fumbling their way toward teaching Richie about the birds and the bees on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and then asking Buddy and Sally to help solve the problem, we now have b-plots and c-plots, where other characters may have unrelated adventures during the half hour, giving us more story.

In drama, we keep raising the stakes. Instead of a sheriff having to duel a single bad guy, we have law enforcement teams trying to stop serial killers. The body count goes up, the level of danger goes up, and we find it hard to look away.

We build the stimulation level—more explosions, fewer clothes. We make it all portable, so that you can be entertained at any place, at any time, in more formats than ever.

And now, with all the growth in internet sources, video games, endlessly overlapping sports seasons, bombardment with movie trailers and tv show promos, podcasts, the young folk are bored.

This represents the most hopeful news I’ve heard in a long time.

And here’s your happy ending: in another Times story, the movie biz is being told that a lot of young people would rather “go do something” than watch another movie.

And let us say, “Amen.”