"The label you give yourself cannot impact external forces that are not motivated by your own psychology or influenced by a third party's pre-existing consciousness of you. We are all presented with reasons to struggle which come from completely external forces; to pretend that one is not struggling is either arrogance or an admission of defeat. To admit that one is struggling is a sign and a source of strength." - Evan A. Baker

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Binge Viewing

The LA Times wrote about Binge Viewing, how watching an entire season of a show in one sitting is changing how we experience television.
"Services such as Netflix and Hulu, as well as digital video recorders, have transformed the TV viewing experience by enabling viewers to devour multiple episodes or even entire seasons of "The Wire" or "Downton Abbey" in marathon viewing sessions."
I already noted that in an article I wrote to webseries producers pleading with them to release all their content at once. The Internet is Not Television and no one will go back to your online show week after week. But if you release the entire season online, and it's good, I'll sit and watch a few episodes. Maybe even the whole season. Because that's what we do already with television shows on the internet. I can watch the entire series of Arrested Development in a few days, and when they release season 4 online, they are going to release all 14 episodes at once! Because that's how we are watching television on the internet now; we want to see the whole thing now.

Last May I predicted the following:
Television is changing. In ten years, (and most likely, way less than that) we'll get most of our series in one fell swoop, and we'll watch television shows series by series. We'll have big tv viewing parties, and they'll become entertainment events - where there's behind the scenes, the making of, and minor characters who spin off onto their own online webseries, that's right, ALL ONLINE. And the website they have with all their extras is also loaded with advertising, so the studios are making even more advertising money.
The internet is changing television. Be smart and savvy about what this means for you as an actor/producer. Give the people what they want: all their entertainment at once, and available at their leisure.

In the meantime, I'm going to spend Super Bowl Sunday watching all of Downton Abbey. 

4 comments:

  1. I totally agree with everything you say - and it's great that you had this insight a while before it seems everyone else did!

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  2. Happy Super Bowl - I mean Downton Abbey Sunday, clever woman! xxA

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  3. Agree agree agree... I've been doing this for years - since I first watched the box set of Alias over one weekend of viewing back in 2005. Love that you've predicted this as a change though as recently I've been listening to mates say "oh this weekend I'm going to watch that entire new series called xxx". I've never really considered that the way we view IS changing. And that will absolutely affect what production companies make and how they distribute.

    Enjoy Super Bowl Sunday!

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  4. I'm kinda playing catch up after a little break. I can't tell you how much I agree to this. I bowed out of a horribly run web series because they couldn't produce on a regular basis. If you can't even produce content regularly, how are you going to expect people to watch. Let along produce it all at once.

    The internet is such a great medium for those of us without access to a network or studio and I completely agree with you. Get it all out there all at once. No one will tune in next week. Especially when there is Downton all at once...and Dr. Who...And now Once (which is so so)

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Play nice.