Streaming: Unchained. The Boom to Bust of Streaming Josiah D. McMeekin

Streaming: Unchained The Boom to Bust of Bingeing

Do you remember the first show you binge watched on a streaming service? It’s a funny question, I know, but I still do. On Saturday November 21st, 2015, I sat down and binge-watched the entire first season of Jessica Jones, the day after it had come out. I had spent weeks working my parents to get them to sign our family up for an account so that I could watch it without the quality issues I had encountered when I watched Daredevil months earlier through what we shall call “alternative” sites.

Since that day I’ve bingewatched more shows than I can, or care to, count. And I’m quite confident that I’m not alone in that. Throughout the mid-to-late 2010s, Netflix soared to success. Video stores vanished across the world as Netflix provided a better service, for less, without needing to leave your home. It devoured huge portions of commercial television’s viewing audience and spawned a swathe of competing sites like Disney+ Amazon Prime, Apple TV and HBOMax.

The keys to Netflix’s success were it’s at the time extensive library, and its binge-release model. Netflix had a huge catalogue, with a little bit of scrolling, or a VPN trip to another country,

you could find whatever your heart desired. But it was the binge-release model with its original series’ that drove Netflix to success. The ‘next episode’ button gave the instantgratification of knowing what happened next, a nail-biting week of waiting for what happened next had become a relic of the past. Netflix’s early unwritten policy of ordering two seasons had in the early days of ordering at least two seasons. This meant no matter what happened to Jessica Jones, Piper Chapman or Eleven at the end of the season, a resolution was only a few months away.

This binge-release model allowed Netflix to remain the slightly disputed king of streaming for years. But, like every major boom in an industry, there was a bust waiting around the corner to follow. So, what changed? Despite its popularity, there had always been a flaw with the binge release model. Longevity. A season would be released, and then for the next two, possibly three weeks, it would dominate online forums and social media. But then it would more or less vanish from the cultural zeitgeist until the next season was released. Now for a time, this wasn’t a problem. But in retrospect, the binge phenomenon was never going to be sustainable for long. A bust had been brewing for some time. All streaming services release their own shows, but the platforms here

are Amazon Prime, and Disney+.

Amazon distinguished themselves from their competition with shows like The Boys, Invincible and The Expanse with a release strategy where they premiered the first two or three episodes of the season, before moving to a weekly release for the rest of the season.

When Disney+ was launched in 2019 riding on the upcoming release of The Mandalorian and the following year with a host of shows based around the Marvel and Star Wars IP’s, primarily adopted a weekly release schedule, though some shows did break the mould and release two or three episodes in their premier weeks.

Now, big companies that offer similar services with different strategies is nothing new. Competition is the name of the game and unique approaches is how you set yourself apart. But it wasn’t the different release schedules by themselves that burst the bubble. It was how people talked about them, and that is where the app TikTok, comes in.

TikTok had a boom in popularity during the COVID pandemic, and some of the people who rose to huge success were those who reviewed, reacted, hyped up and ‘broke down’ episodes of television shows. The shows Prime and Disney+ put out each had between six and eight episodes, which meant that they would run for between six and eight weeks. This gave content creators a whole week to produce a swathe of videos about each episode. Cliff-hangers meant something once again. Easter eggs, references, the secret meanings of subtle things and fan theories dominated not just TikTok but the rest of the internet in ways that they hadn’t in quite some time.

Money is the name of the game but dominating the cultural zeitgeist and remaining relevant to it is worth its weight in gold as well. And that is something that Disney+ and Prime have found a way to do successfully. Boosting both their revenue, and the name of their brands.

So where does that leave Netflix? Well, they aren’t going anywhere, and neither is binge-watching. But there may be changes to the company’s release model in the future. Recent reports state the company is apparently looking to shift away from the binge release model to a weekly schedule like its competitors, whether that happens remains to be seen.

Regardless, the binge release bubble has burst, and the weekly release model dominating the industry once again.