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Tag: Binge Watching

  • Netflix Confirms Pilots Aren’t All That Great (at Hooking People)

    Netflix Confirms Pilots Aren’t All That Great (at Hooking People)

    With some notable exceptions (looking at you, The Shield, Breaking Bad, LOST), pilot episodes often fall flat. Viewers don’t always love exposition, and even great shows sometimes take a few episodes (or even seasons) to hit their stride.

    Netflix recently looked at its streaming data in an attempt to pinpoint when viewers get hooked on certain shows – and the company pretty much confirmed that nobody is really “hooked” after just the pilot episode.

    “Given the precious nature of primetime slots on traditional TV, a series pilot is arguably the most important point in the life of the show,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. “However, in our research of more than 20 shows across 16 markets, we found that no one was ever hooked on the pilot. This gives us confidence that giving our members all episodes at once is more aligned with how fans are made.”

    Oh, so it’s all about proving the Netflix business model of binge-watching. Ok, fine. But it did produce some interesting results.

    Here are some popular shows and their corresponding “hook” episodes:

    – Arrow: Episode 8
    – Bates Motel: Episode 2
    – Better Call Saul: Episode 4
    – Bloodline: Episode 4
    – BoJack Horseman: Episode 5
    – Breaking Bad: Episode 2
    – Dexter: Episode 3
    – Gossip Girl: Episode 3
    – Grace & Frankie: Episode 4
    – House of Cards: Episode 3
    – How I Met Your Mother: Episode 8
    – Mad Men: Episode 6
    – Marco Polo: Episode 3
    – Marvel’s Daredevil: Episode 5
    – Once Upon a Time: Episode 6
    – Orange is the New Black: Episode 3
    – Pretty Little Liars: Episode 4
    – Scandal: Episode 2
    – Sense8: Episode 3
    – Sons of Anarchy: Episode 2
    – Suits: Episode 2
    – The Blacklist: Episode 6
    – The Killing: Episode 2
    – The Walking Dead: Episode 2
    – Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Episode 4

    What does “hooked” mean to Netflix? “70% of viewers who watched the hooked episode went on to complete season one or more poetically, when members were hooked and there was no turning back,” says the company.

    Wait, it took people two episodes to fall in love with Breaking Bad? Wtf?

  • NBC Is Pulling a Netflix and Dropping All 13 Episodes of ‘Aquarius’ at Once

    NBC has caught the binge-watching bug.

    The network had decided to take a page from Netflix’s book and just dump an entire season of a new show for viewers to stream at their pleasure. Following its May 28 premiere, the new David Duchovny – Charles Manson show Aquarius will land online. All of it.

    NBC says you’ll be able to stream all 13 episodes of the first season for four weeks on NBC.com, the NBC app, and video on-demand. The show will also continue to air on a week-to-week basis in its normal timeslot.

    “With Aquarius we have the opportunity to push some new boundaries to give our audience something no broadcast network has done before,“ said NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt. “We are fully aware how audiences want to consume multiple episodes of new television series faster and at their own discretion, and we’re excited to offer our viewers this same experience since all 13 episodes of this unique show have been produced and are ready to be seen. I appreciate the enthusiasm we’ve gotten from the producers of the show and our partner Marty Adelstein of Tomorrow Studios to launch this series in a new, forward-thinking way.”

    It certainly is new and forward-thinking for a broadcast network. This is a first.

    While the move to forgo the traditional release structure is a huge deal for a network, The Hollywood Reporter has something that’s possibly more interesting.

    The episodes will only be available for the first four weeks of the run. And it makes sense considering producers have cut two versions of the series. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that one will be more broadcast friendly with the other intended to push the envelope on streaming.

    This isn’t just R-rated bonus scenes – this is apparently two different cuts of the series. If online streaming becomes a place where networks like NBC, FOX, ABC, and CBS can push the boundaries and create content with more adult elements, boy would that be a game changer.

    Image via NBCAquarius, Twitter

  • Netflix Defends Content Release Strategy

    Since Netflix has been offering its customers original shows, it has been offering them full seasons at a time, catering to the well-known binge-watching phenomenon.

    Netflix’s competitors have often criticized this approach, and when the company changed the strategy up a little bit late last year with the launch of Turbo FAST, some questioned whether the company was straying from a strategy that maybe wasn’t the best idea to begin with.

    According to Netflix, those people would be wrong. They’ve already since clarified that they would continue to launch entire seasons of shows at a time. The second season of Lilyhammer was recently released, and the full second season of House of Cards will launch next month. Turbo FAST, however, was released with six episodes at first, with more to come within a few months.

    Some of Netflix critics have suggested that releasing a full season at once detracts from the social media buzz that can be maintained by releasing an episode per week. Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos was asked about this in a Google Hangout about the company’s Q4 performance.

    He responded, “We’re very thrilled with the strategy today, and one of the things that I think dispels some of the concern or mythology about what happens to social media when you drop all the shows at once…check out the Google Trends for House of Cards and The Americans, which both debuted on the same day, and look at the pattern, and what you see is week over week over week, there is more chatter about House of Cards than there is about The Americans week over week over week.”

    “And the same thing is true about The Bridge and Orange is the New Black,” he added. “They debuted on the same day. So I think that mythology should be pretty well dispelled by now, and the consumers really love it because they can really decide, ‘Hey, I’m gonna watch the whole show this weekend, I’m gonna watch one a week,’ or however they want to do it, so it’s really something the viewers love, and that’s why we love it.”

    “And as far as Turbo‘s concerned, Turbo is not a serialized program at all, and kids don’t watch the same way that you and I do, and particularly the way that you and I watch serialized programming,” Sarandos continued. “So giving them five episodes enabled us to accelerate the availability to drop the episodes in the holiday period when kids are home watching a lot of shows, and it was a tremendous success. They watched all five. They watched them over and over again. They watched just the way kids watch cartoons.”

    It’s true. They really do watch them over and over again.

    “So we’re really thrilled with the strategy, and I anticipate that we’ll continue to play and tweak with it, but a departure from it with radically different kinds of programming doesn’t signal a change in the strategy,” Sarandos said.

    Netflix talked up the success of Turbo FAST in a letter to shareholders, saying it had “been very popular with kids around the world, performing especially strong throughout Latin America.” While it only launched about a month ago, Netflix says it’s already on track to become one of the most popular kids series ever on Netflix.

    That’s saying something. Keep in mind they used to have Nickelodeon content.

    More kids shows from Dreamworks Animation are on the way to Netflix this year.

    Image via YouTube

  • Netflix Shares Some Data On Binge Watching

    Netflix is sharing results from a recent Harris Interactive survey, finding that out of 1,500 adult TV streamers in the U.S (those that stream shows at least once a week), 61% “binge watch” shows regularly.

    73% of these people defined bing watching as watching between two and six episodes of the same show in one sitting, as opposed to weekend-long marathons.

    Additionally, 73% say they have positive feelings towards binge watching, as opposed to feelings of guilt.

    To go along with the Harris poll, Netflix hired cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken to “trace the evolution of binge watching” and go into people’s homes and “explore their changing TV behaviors”.

    Probably not as creepy as it sounds.

    “I found that binge watching has really taken off due to a perfect storm of better TV, our current economic climate and the digital explosion of the last few years,” says McCracken. “But this TV watcher is different, the couch potato has awoken. And now that services like Netflix have given consumers control over their TV viewing, they have declared a new way to watch.”

    “TV viewers are no longer zoning out as a way to forget about their day, they are tuning in, on their own schedule, to a different world,” he says. “Getting immersed in multiple episodes or even multiple seasons of a show over a few weeks is a new kind of escapism that is especially welcomed today,”

    Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos adds, “Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace. Netflix has pioneered audience choice in programming and has helped free consumers from the limitations of linear television. Our own original series are created for multi-episodic viewing, lining up the content with new norms of viewer control for the first time.”

    79% said watching several episodes of shows makes them more enjoyable, and 76% said watching shows on their owns schedules is the preferred method. Lending more data to the theory that binge watching is a couples’ activity, 51% say they like to binge with at least one other person (compared to 38% for solo). 39% who prefer to save shows to watch later choose to stream saved series or seasons when the person they want to watch with is available.

    80% of streamers say they’d rather stream a good show than read a friend’s social media posts. Who are these other 20%?

    Fans can binge on the new season of Lilyhammer, as it just became available today. The second season of Netflix favorite House of Cards will be available for binge watching on Valentine’s Day. That should make for quite the romantic occasion.

    Netflix recently announced the release schedule for its new kids show Turbo FAST, which has the first season broken up, leaving some to wonder if Netflix is altering its strategy of binge-inducing releases. Not so much. The release of these new findings further solidifies that this is not Netflix’s intention.

    In fact, Netflix has already released one of its other shows in a fashion similar to its Turbo FAST plans. The company told BusinessWeek that it’s just about how the episodes are delivered to them. In most cases, it’s still going to be in a way that encourages binge watching.

    Image: Netflix

  • 38% of Americans Use Netflix, 88% Report Binge Viewing

    38% of Americans Use Netflix, 88% Report Binge Viewing

    More than one-third of Americans now stream movies and TV shows via Netflix.

    A new report from Nielsen says that 38% of people in the U.S. use or subscribe to Netflix, up from 31% in 2012.

    Overall, the use of streaming services has increased in the past year. Use of Hulu and Amazon Prime have also been on the rise, with 18% of those surveyed said to be streaming Hulu (up from 12% last year) and 13% using Amazon Prime Instant Video (up from 7%). The vast majority of Netflix users stream content on their computer (48%), followed by mobile phone (26%).

    The report also looked at binge-watching, or the practice of streaming multiple episodes of a show in a single sitting. Nielsen found that 88 percent of Netflix users and 70 percent of Hulu Plus users binge-watch – undoubtedly bolstered by Netflix’s recent foray into original content.

    Although the practice of binge-watching is inarguably great for viewers, in that it gives them the freedom to stream as many episodes as they want whenever they want, some argue that the trend could actually be harmful to Netflix’s bottom line. With so much content being consumed at such a rapid pace, Netflix may feel pushed to spend on more and more content in order to keep up with user demand.

    But Netflix has made the binge-watching a selling point by releasing all of their original and exclusive series in one big chunk. Turning everything around and going back to a model where viewers have to wait for additional episodes to appear could be a risky proposition as well – and there is no indication that the company is looking to change the way they serve content to their customers.

    Image via Netflix

  • Amazon Says No to Binge Watching with Its Original Series

    As far as subscription-based streaming video providers go, Netflix got out ahead of the rest of the pack when it comes to high-quality original content. And since they’re the trendsetters, it’s their release style and structure that most people have come to expect.

    Just dump all of the episodes at once – that’s the Netflix way. They did it with Lilyhammer, House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, and Arrested Development. You might have assumed that all streaming services would follow suit, releasing all of the episodes of their own original series at the same time. And you wouldn’t have been wrong to assume that.

    But apparently, your assumption is wrong. According to the producers of a new Amazon original series, that’s not the way they’re going to play it.

    Back in April, Amazon debuted 14 pilots, put them up for free, and took user feedback. From that feedback, Amazon made some cuts and decided to greenlight five new series: Alpha House, Betas, Annebots, Creative Galaxy, and Tumbleaf.

    Jonathan Alter, former Newsweek columnist and author, is an executive producer on one of those series – Alpha House. That show stars John Goodman and was written by Doonesbury‘s Garry Trudeau. It’s about four U.S. Senators who live together in a rented house in Washington D.C. Alter recently told The Wrap that Amazon was not going to release all of the new Alpha House episodes at the same time.

    “It hasn’t been entirely determined how they’ll put it out. But it will be a different model than the one used by Netflix,” he said.

    That’s interesting and it shows that Amazon isn’t afraid to buck the trend set by Netflix – even if that trend is proving popular with viewers. Binge watching has its benefits – mainly the absolute lack of any sort of forced delayed gratification. But it also can have its drawbacks, as some argue that the immediate availability dampens the buzz for any particular show by failing to keep it in the pop culture eye for more than a few weeks.

    Alpha House is set to debut in the Fall.

  • Arrested Development Creator: Binge Watching On Netflix Could Make It Less Fun

    Arrested Development’s return via Netflix is only days away (it will be available on Sunday, May 26th), and fans who have been waiting for years are ready to dive in.

    Netflix’s exclusive shows have brought about a new trend of “binge watching” (watching the entire season immediately, as opposed to the traditional one episode per week format), but should we really be doing this to ourselves?

    While Arrested Development’s new season will indeed be released all at once, the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, warns that viewers who choose to watch it this way may miss out on some of the fun. In an interview with Wired, he said:

    “I think of it more like writing a mini-series than something [for] binge watching… I think that people do sit down and watch it all at once. Personally, I think [that] will be very fatiguing and will lose some of the fun of being able to mull on it. But I think that with the majority of binge watchers, it’s a modified binge watching, just like the majority of novel readers. You know, you don’t read it all at once. But you are in control of when you feel like going back to it… I personally hope people don’t sit and watch it for, you know, 500 minutes or longer.”

    Don’t underestimate the years of anticipation leading up to this season. Die hard fans who were outraged by the show’s original cancellation have had to wade through rumor after rumor about the show’s return and a possible movie for a long time. The fact that the show is actually back is still shocking to many. While some may choose to take their time and savor it (leaving some time between episodes), my guess is that many of these fans will want to consume it all as quickly as possible, then of course, consume it over and over again.

    That is, if Arrested’s return lives up to expectations and the greatness that made fans fall in love with it oh so long ago. We’ll find out soon enough.

    Read Wired’s full interview with Hurwitz here.