Not to date myself, but I grew up when TV series were typically aired one episode a week through the end of each season. You could always record them and watch a bunch at once, but that meant you had to hold off watching them for weeks or even months. Netflix disrupted that traditional release strategy and viewing experience as they began dropping an entire season all of once, whether for their own original series or for their library of existing shows. Suddenly, viewers were given the option to just binge-watch an entire season of shows in a weekend.
For a few years, that became something of the norm for streaming content. We all got used to being able to binge a new series on Netflix the moment it was released. Not everyone loved this mode of TV viewing, but it certainly felt like the way of the future for streaming content. If you wanted to watch shows in the old-school, weekly release format, you could stick with the major broadcasts TV channels. But, then a funny thing happened in the streaming universe. Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus began adopting the weekly release schedule for at least some of their original content.
If the future of streaming video content felt entirely bing-focused, now we know a mixed viewing experience is going to stick around for the foreseeable future. There are proponents and detractors for each viewing option, so let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons.
Who Should Control the Cadence?
One of the main benefits of a full-series release is that viewers have total control over when to watch each episode, in what sequence, and with how much time. Want to watch the show over time, an episode at a time over a week or two? Good to go. Want to stay up all weekend and just power through the entire series? You’re covered. It’s hard to argue with the control that a full-series drop provides to viewers.
Is Every Story Best Told All at Once?
While anyone who has binged a show can attest, it is pretty cool to get sucked into a story and be able to follow it from beginning to end at as fast a pace as you want. Some shows even really lend themselves to a binge-watch schedule. If you remember the TV show 24, from back in the early 2000’s, that is an example of a show that is super binge-worthy. I watched it when a cable channel was running the episodes back to back and the urgency of the show totally fit into the binge format.
However, there are shows where each episode lends itself to some viewer introspection before jumping to the next installment. WandaVision is a good recent example. You could certainty binge it, but I wonder if some of the nuances might go missing with no breaks in between episodes.
Staying in the Social Conversation
Both WandaVision and the recent The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney Plus are great examples of shows that really got viewers engaged on social media, talking about the plot, questions about what things meant, what was coming next, etc. That sort of social engagement among viewers can’t really happy organically if a show is binged. Then, the conversation is just about whether the show was good or bad. But, the weekly release schedule of both shows allowed viewers to spiral on minor plot points or crazy conjecture about where the story was going. Whether entirely intentionally or not, both shows created tons of articles and social media posts about every episode. That is both fantastic for the studio and also obviously engaging for the audience.
So, which is better for viewers?
The answer has to be ‘it depends’. Some shows really lend themselves to binging and of course the user choice of being able to bing an entire season of an older series is hard to argue against. But, there are definitely shows that can benefit from a more protracted, weekly-release schedule, where the viewing experience is enhanced by the anticipation of waiting for each episode.
