What's the youngest person you have the chance to observe the evening routine of?
Both my girlfriend and my sister will go to bed every evening, pull out their phone, and spend an hour watching 1 minute short viral videos on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Endless stream. 1 minute bits of content.
My girlfriend has gone so far as saying Snapchat's serious channels are the best service to catch up on the news.
In terms of younger audiences though there is also huge success with high budget animation. Pixar's success over time still seems more tied to quality of each film rather than declining consistently over time due to loss of interest in the format itself.
For news, 100% agree, ripe for disruption from social media (or at least web over cable news) although that is obviously facing new challenges in terms of reliability (i.e. Facebook/Twitter re election).
Similar to how a lot of high budget production moved from making 3 hour movies, to making 10 1 hour episodes. Overall more and better content, but in smaller easier to digest pieces.
I think that's a trend that isn't going away. People, especially as they age, have less and less time to stick to one thing. If you can cut it up for them and make it nibbleable, they will go for it.
When was the last time you chose to watch a full movie at home in one sitting? I bet you watch Netflix series instead, or pause your movie and continue the next day.
To imagine an extreme end of the spectrum as a thought experiment, I can't imagine that 5 years from now I'll be watching 1 minute viral videos all evening instead of professionally produced long form content. Candy is great but I still haven't replaced a (complex) full meal dinner with a pile of candies.
Even for video content on Facebook, I'd assume as that takes up more of the finite time it will trend towards increasing volumes of professionally produced content.
There's a lot of interesting low budget user generated content but that won't change the fact that a lot of value created by professional, extremely talented writers, producers, cinematographers, editors, special effects graphics creators, etc..