In the digital age of streaming services, I always ask myself to binge or not to binge?
When a new television show comes out, there is always that temptation to watch the whole new season in one sitting.
However, there are people like myself that like to cherish one episode at a time.
Patiently waiting years for a new season of your favorite show and then binge-watching the entire thing in one sitting seems to diminish the anticipated experience.
Streaming services like HBO release their new episodes weekly, which follows the more traditional model before the birth of Netflix, the true leader of the binge culture of streaming.
Having a prolonged schedule gives HBO a dialed-in show schedule by holding onto the attention of the audience for much longer comparatively to Netflix.
The decay rate of Netflix shows that release all at once is much higher than the shows that have a weekly basis release or even periodic releases, according to a Parrot Analysts article.
The decay rate is determined by three different periods: On-season when the episodes are being released, past-season is after the last episode is released, and off-season is the rest of the time until the new season is released, all this information is compared to see if there is a decay or growth rate, according to the same Parrot Analytics article.
Weekly releases hold a more valuable experience for the viewer because when a new episode is released weekly, there is always something to look forward to.
I recently started watching “The Penguin” and while waiting for its weekly episode, I talk about the past episode with my friends on what they thought about the episode or theories of the next episode.
Towards the end of the week, there are instances where my roommates and I would all wait for one another to get home from work and watch our weekly episode together that involves popcorn, candy and post-show gossip.
Another great benefit of having weekly releases is it is nearly impossible to be spoiled on what happens.
Getting a show spoiled can sometimes feel like getting stabbed in the back. As viewers, we invest into the lore, plot, characters and endings in our favorite shows. Streaming services that still use the traditional model of releasing weekly have an advantage because every week, it can promote shows through social media accounts according to a VSN article.
In most cases, with weekly released shows, you get a new trailer every week for the episode, audiences posting memes and comments on what they think of the show so far and theories of what might happen next.
It is a great way to keep the audience talking about the show for a prolonged period of time.
There are benefits of binging a show, and like everybody else in the modern age, I have been guilty of binge watching several shows.
The main difference is I typically binge shows that aren’t recently released such as “The Wire,” which concluded its series in 2008 and “Lost” in 2010.
The problem with Netflix is that it is one of the streaming platforms that introduced a new model of show-watching through releasing all episodes of a show at once, according to a Verge article.
Over the summer I watched the show “Dexter” in less than a month and in some ways, I can see why so many people can succumb to the urge to binge.
It was fun being able to binge a whole show in such a short amount of time but after I finished watching, I felt like it would have been better if I spaced the series out longer to maximize my enjoyment.
We all have had that internal debate with ourselves of just one more episode during the late night and early mornings of our binge sessions.
I think there are many different reasons as to why an individual tends to enjoy a particular show but for me, I always believed that less is more.
