Just some thoughts:
When I was younger and Lord of the Rings made a comback, most of my friends read the books in a hurry, discussed some big events, played with sticks and that was it. With Harry Potter we had to wait in between each book. We spent hours discussing the books, re-reading them looking for clues.
I can't really watch a series alone, I have to "share" the experience with someone.
That's a pretty bold statement to make. Do you feel the same way about books? Movies? Stage plays? If you're trying to say that "[art] says nothing of import" I think many would passionately disagree.
If you're only talking about television... I still think you're wrong.
I sometimes have to wonder what someone from a poor, war-ravaged country must think when they stumble across things like this.
I personally love to be able to binge a new television show, like House of Cards but at the same time I also love the discussions around it (Breaking Bad had some very cool discussions in between episodes). So I'm not quite sure what format is better in the long run.
Perhaps the future will be more like how Sherlock Series 3 was aired (only a few days between episodes, not an entire week). Whatever the case, television is only getting better from this point onwards.
This pretty much happened with HoC season 1 as well. Massive hype for this Fincher/Spacey series and then... nothing until a month or two ago for season 2. On the contrary, shows like "Orange is the new black" didn't have much hype initially and slowly grew as more and more people binged through it and became pretty popular.
Andy Greenwald said it best: "I’ve argued before that encouraging this sort of bingeing does no favors to the art or the audience. It takes a pleasantly coursed dinner party and transforms it into a hot dog eating contest." http://grantland.com/features/breaking-bad-black-mirror-year...
I wonder if we'll see a shift in the writing and flow of TV shows now that marketers can't get millions of people worked up on social media over cliffhangers anymore.
Consider Game of Thrones -- I'm perfectly able to discuss Seasons 1 and 2 with my friends who haven't yet seen Season 3, if I'm mindful to avoid spoilers.
Community discussion can be had, it just needs to be conscientious.
I've been doing this for TV shows since long before Netflix streaming existed - I would wait until a season (or show) ended, and then rent the entire series from Blockbuster, one disk at a time.
I don't always have time to watch shows regularly, and it's great being able to do it at my own pace. Plus, I'm impatient when it comes to cliffhangers[0]
[0] This sort of behavior can be very lucrative for Netflix. Many episodes of Weeds ended with cliffhangers or twists that caused me to watch an episode or two more at a time than I'd originally planned. To a lesser extent, Orange is the New Black (also created by Jenji Kohan) used the same technique as well.
The only two downsides to this that I see would be the possibility of being spoiled by others' discussions of the already-aired episodes (ironic) and potentially having to wait an extra few weeks to watch the whole season.
1) I could see it if they do all the editing at the end as a whole, but it seems unlikely
The glaring exception is South Park, which is done pretty much days before release.
Also, sitcoms that are filmed in front of a studio audience tend to be filmed just a few weeks in advance, since they film whole episodes at once. Something like HOC is filmed more like a movie, where all the scenes in one place are filmed together.
But seriously, the solution here is the same: form a club. Force yourselves to read/watch at the same pace, and you'll actually have a more social experience than if you all read/ separately and only occasionally managed to start up an ad-hoc conversation.
Also, what is the proportion of XERQ users that are also Netflix subscribers? That could be a telling metric as well.
I could be way off, but I have a funny suspicion that the numbers are rather different.
Regardless, for this conversation, the number of people who could see the shows is not relevant. It's the number of people who did see them. I don't think anyone knows the number for House of Cards aside from Netflix.
http://www.reddit.com/r/houseofcards has plenty of discussion
http://www.reddit.com/r/orangeisthenewblack/ has a lot of discussion as well.
Exclusively going to either end of the spectrum has clear disadvantages:
– On the binge end, if everything is released at once, almost no one on the planet will be on the exact same viewing schedule. Some people will watch the entire season at once, some will watch an episode per night, and so on. It makes it difficult to discuss the show with anyone because you first have to establish how much each of you have watched. Does it make discussion impossible? Absolutely not, but it presents a barrier.
– On the other end of the spectrum, limiting the availability of a show's back catalog will obviously limit a show's audience. Most of the successful shows of the past few years grew their audience over time, which requires access to that back catalog. Netflix, being the most popular service for this kind of thing, is the logical place to license your content if you care about improving your show's future prospects. Again, not being on Netflix does not make it impossible to catch up, but it presents another barrier.
Breaking Bad is the ideal example for this model. It's a great show that built its audience through word-of-mouth; if their back catalog wasn't available, the word-of-mouth recommendation would be DOA because most people would not have broken through the barrier. Similarly, if they had just dumped season 5 onto Netflix, it would have eliminated the week-over-week hype cycle that built over the course of the season and climaxed with a finale that was watched 700% more than the show's pilot.
Also, releasing every episode at once almost entirely eliminates cliffhangers. That's no fun.
> (which was great if you were on the East Coast, but West Coast / Best Coast knew not to check the thread until after watching it
Same answer here -- if you haven't watched it yet, don't look at the threads.
It sucks, but with progress we sometimes (often?) lose some nice things.
In my opinion, it's worth it, in this case. I love having the freedom to watch a show when I want. I hate it when I have to wait for the next episode, especially if its release is delayed due to some football game (I'm looking at you True Detective).
So you see only filtered comments written by people who had seen the same (or less) episodes than you (at the time the comment is written).
That would be cool.
Maybe Netflix increases discussions but delays them a year.
In a world where consumption is on demand, discussion groups need to be on demand as well. A way to do this is to create a new discussion group for each episode so people can connect and discuss with others that have seen up to the same point.
Sure, most of the action will be at the latest part, and spoilers might slip in, but with more people continually trickling through the system, the conversation for each episode never really needs to end.
Anyways, I could say more but time to get back to work. Feel free to reach out, contact info in my profile.
"Previously what would be a community experience..."
Of course, I'd not suggest going back to VHS...
My take on binge viewing - I'd rather see a Greatest Hits to get current. I don't have 2 hours to sit through a movie, let alone 72 to get caught up on a series.
Nice! I'm glad that I can watch House of Cards all at once, and that this article exists.
What most people seem to do these days is: (1) binge watch, (2) discuss what it meant for the week after, (3) re-watch a few months later to get a sense of what they missed due to binge watching. Shows like Breaking Bad have enough depth that it's worth it to watch them a second time.
Still, I doubt the release-all-at-once dynamic will be the norm in 3 years, but I doubt we'll have the arbitrary winter breaks designed to make sure the season finale lands in the 20s of May. I could see an every-two-days release cycle being the norm (so a show like House of Cards would unfold over a month).