I don't think it's anything unique to the "TikTok era". It has always been like that, as long as I can remember. Decades ago was the same. My guess is that the

I don't think it's anything unique to the "TikTok era". It has always been like that, as long as I can remember. Decades ago was the same. My guess is that the primary challenges are a) finding a subject that happens to exactly fit the 60-minute time slot without requiring grievous cuts or padding. I imagine it is hard to know this in advance. I notice, for instance, the bigger, famous theatrical documentaries don't exactly have a uniform run-length. b) production costs. Sure, you could fly around the world to interview another 4 experts and get another 3-hours of footage (that you cut down to 15-minutes) and have a graphics artist who charges $1,000/day generate more models ... or you could just recycle and pad with cheap filler to reach your run-time. After all, you were only given a budget of $X,000 to make a 60-minute documentary.