But we—the audience—have followed suit. We treat a 10-hour prestige drama like a 30-second TikTok. If it doesn’t hook us in the first 90 seconds, we bounce. If the ending is ambiguous, we call it "bad writing" instead of "art." Even though the landscape is chaotic, a few genres are currently winning the battle for our attention spans:

Not just watched the finale, but sat through the credits, let out a deep breath, and felt that specific melancholy of saying goodbye to characters you’ve lived with for months?

While the system is broken, the art isn't. The difference is that you have to dig for it now. The mainstream is terrified of taking risks, so the weird, wonderful stuff lives in the margins.