What Comes After TV?

Snapchat is making hypercondensed shows specifically to watch on a smartphone. It’s harder than you’d think.

- Kathryn VanArendonk

AT SNAPCHAT’S New York offices this winter, members of the creative team behind the popular reality series Endless were feeling the limitations of mobile storytelling. The episode they had gathered to edit included a big set piece: Star Summer McKeen and her friend Jessica Matis walk through Times Square without realizing that McKeen’s ex-boyfriend, Dylan Jordan, is there at the same time. As McKeen disappears into the crowd, there is a Sliding Doors moment; behind her, Jordan appears on a billboard-size screen, filmed by a camera that captures footage of tourists. On a reality show made for TV, this is where you would cut to a wide shot, measuring the distance between the two exes. But on one made for a phone-size screen, it didn’t quite … fit.

The team knew this posed narrative problems. How close were McKeen and Jordan supposed to be? Had she seen him, or hadn’t she? “There’s no time for slow builds on mobile,” Snapchat head of content Sean Mills, explained later. He mimicked panning a camera around the room. “You’ll lose people right here.” His hands stopped long before the camera would have come to focus on our conversation.

For months now, a mobile-storytelling platform called Quibi has loomed on the content horizon, promising that, when its app launches this spring, it will be a home to a huge library of short-form shows made specifically for your phone. But Snapchat has been operating in that space for years. According to its numbers, 218 million people use the app daily. With over 38 million viewers, Endless (previously called