Streaming services have most definitely changed the experience for the mass majority of people. It has become more convenient for people to easily consume different types of media. But an overlooked aspect of the way in which the experience of many people’s consumption of TV has changed is the way in the way of the media itself. The newer culture of binging seasons has made episodes longer, seasons shorter, and wait times for more content grow.
The most viewed show on Netflix, Squid Game took about a year for the second season to air and had it’s longest episode lasted 76 minutes. This may not seem like such massive numbers to a lot of people however the second most viewed show on Netflix, Stranger things took about 3 years for season 4 to come out and season 5 is set to come out about 3 years after that and it’s longest episode was longer than 2 hours.
While there were many setbacks in the creation of both of these seasons like the Covid-19 pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike many people felt that this was still a very large amount of time. Prior to this era in time, a multitude of shows released weekly and the wait between seasons was a couple months to a year.
Binge-watching has created an incentive for companies to wait longer to release things and release longer episodes each season to keep views hooked for longer and longer snippets of time. Some people say that this hurts the viewing experience because people don’t process as much information when they view things all at once in that manner. But there are some benefits of course, people have more options of what and when to watch. In fact, shifts in what people are choosing to view has made it so many shows are focused on more personal stories. As Becks Vogels, a company communication expert explains, “…it is focused on people, their characters, their journey, and the overarching question: How did this person become who they are today? And where are they going next?” Even though some people may find it a tad over bored for an audience to wait a few years for their favorite show to come out or sit through a multi-hour-long episode, people are able to consume a wide variety of different things, and the streaming services are responding to what the individual is looking for.
