Itâs probably happened to you. You sit down to watch one episode of a show, and when it ends, youâre left dying to know what happens next. âWhatâs one more 50-minute episode?â you ask yourself. Three hours later, youâre still on your couch, binge-watching.
While precisely how many episodes it takes to be a true binge [is a matter of debate]( watching two or more episodes of the same television show in one sitting is a good working definition. Yes, TV and movie marathons have existed for decades, via VHS, DVD, and as holiday or weekend programming blocks on cable television, but streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, and BritBox have transformed binge-watching from a special event into the de facto way to experience a new show. And despite the buzzy breakout successes of series like Stranger Things, a lot of binge-watching is dedicated to what we used to call rerunsâold episodes of The Office and [Friends]( are consistently among the most-streamed shows.
Binge-watching hasnât just shaped our relationship with television, it has dramatically changed the entertainment industry. The next episode starts now.
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[Quartz Daily Obsession]
Binge-watching
April 17, 2020
Just one more episode
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Itâs probably happened to you. You sit down to watch one episode of a show, and when it ends, youâre left dying to know what happens next. âWhatâs one more 50-minute episode?â you ask yourself. Three hours later, youâre still on your couch, binge-watching.
While precisely how many episodes it takes to be a true binge [is a matter of debate]( watching two or more episodes of the same television show in one sitting is a good working definition. Yes, TV and movie marathons have existed for decades, via VHS, DVD, and as holiday or weekend programming blocks on cable television, but streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, and BritBox have transformed binge-watching from a special event into the de facto way to experience a new show. And despite the buzzy breakout successes of series like Stranger Things, a lot of binge-watching is dedicated to what we used to call rerunsâold episodes of The Office and [Friends]( are consistently among the most-streamed shows.
Binge-watching hasnât just shaped our relationship with television, it has dramatically changed the entertainment industry. The next episode starts now.
ð¦ [Tweet this!](
ð [View this email on the web](
By the digits
[52%:]( Share of participants in a 2018 survey who said they had stayed up all night binge-watching at least once
[45%:]( Share of young adults who have canceled plans to continue watching a show
[76%:]( Share of viewers ages 18 to 29 who prefer binge-watching
[45%:]( Share of viewers ages 55 to 64 who prefer binge-watching
[160 million:]( Netflix subscribers worldwide
[10 million:]( Disney+ subscribers on the first day of its North America launch
[~20:]( Hours Americans spend watching TV each week
[361,000:]( Viewers who watched all nine episodes of season two of Stranger Things in the first 24 hours it was available
[189 million kg (417 million lb):]( CO2 produced by the 64 million people who watched season three of Stranger Things, based on the energy required to power routers, data centers, and streaming
AP Photo
Million-dollar question
Whatâs the best way to watch?
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When Netflix released the entire first season of the political thriller House of Cards in one day in 2013, such an approach had never been done before. âIt all felt very experimental,â Beau Willimon, the showâs creator, [told the Wall Street Journal](. âWe were a bit shocked at how quickly the world glommed onto the idea of streaming shows over the internet and binge-watching seasons.â Now thatâs the standard on most streaming sites (HBO remains a holdout).
Streaming services like Hulu, Disney+ and Apple TV+ have experimented with [releasing episodes on a weekly basis]( to see if viewers retain interest longer, and as a way to do more with less, in the face of the seemingly-endless [amount of content produced by Netflix](. Even Netflix, though, has made the occasional exception. In 2019, it released one new episode per week of [The Great British Baking Show in the US]( two days after each episode originally aired in the UK.
Cable companies are [losing subscribers each quarter]( but it doesnât mean they also canât join the market in new ways to retain the interest of viewers. HBO has created original content that makes it worthwhile for subscribers to pay $14.99 a month. Channels like NBC are creating their own streaming networks, and Viacom has also made content-specific streaming sites.
Quotable
âOften Iâll be like, OK, Iâm just gonna watch this one episode while I sit on the couch and fold laundry. And then, yes, suddenly five hours later Iâm still on the couch with only half the laundry folded.â
â[Ashley Fetters in The Atlantic](
Explain it like Iâm 5!
How binge-watching has changed television
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Streaming services have doubled down on creating original content in recent years. Writers donât have to work around commercial breaks; episodes can be as long or as short as desired, and the number of episodes in a season is no longer dictated by traditional network schedules, allowing for [more killer, less filler]( with as few as 10 per season, perhaps with a [six-month gap]( in between instead of a full year.
Writing for binge-watching opens up new narrative possibilities. The creators of Netflixâs Bloodline [told Quartz]( they approached the series like a movie or play, with multiple episodes working together as an act; didnât have to wind every character through [A, B, and C storylines]( in every episode to keep them in viewersâ minds; and didnât have to worry about repeating information to hook new viewers who came in late.
The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich uses her writersâ strengths to vary the voice of the show from one episode to the next so that too much continuity, critical to tiding audiences over for a week, doesnât kill binges. âI donât want everything to sound like I wrote it. That is my worst nightmare. No one wants that, especially when youâre bingeing,â [she told TV Guide](. âYou want individual episodes to really have a distinct tone.â
Such a valley of plenty may keep more viewers hooked on a show that would otherwise shed them week by week. On an [October 2019 earnings call]( an analyst asked Netflix chief content officer Theodore Sarandos if the service would consider not dropping addictive series all at once, as is [often suggested](. He used his love of HBOâs Succession to suggest itâs a high bar to clear: âIf I like that show a little bit less I would probably burn out on it, because I get aggravated every week waiting for the next episode. Thatâs how much I like it. So we are trying to fine-tune the proposition to the customer.â
Giphy
pop quiz
What was the most-watched show on Netflix in 2018?
"Cheers""Stranger Things""Friends""The Office"
Correct. Subscribers streamed 52 million minutes of "The Office," 20 million more than "Friends."
Incorrect.
If your inbox doesnât support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email.
Brief history
[1990s:]( Entire seasons of television shows become available on box sets of VHS tapes, and binge-watching takes off.
[1997:]( Netflix launches, allowing subscribers to rent DVDs online, receive them in the mail, and send them back when finished. There are no overdue fees, a major change from video stores.
[2007:]( Netflix launches an online streaming service. Other cable companies create on-demand services for shows and movies around the same time.
[2011:]( Netflix begins using the term binge-watch internally.
[2013:]( Binge-watch is shortlisted by Oxford Dictionaries as word of the year.
[2015:]( Collins English Dictionary chooses binge-watch as word of the year.
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Fun fact!
It would [take six days and two hours]( to watch all nine seasons of the suspense thriller 24 back to back.
Watch this!
Dawn of the binge
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Portlandia was ahead of its time with this skit about bingeing an entire box set of Battlestar Galactica DVDs. Itâs highly relatable even almost a decade later.
Giphy
This one weird trick!
The comfort of the couchÂ
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The term âbinge-watchingâ bugs Barry Enderwick, a former marketing executive with Netflix. â[W]hen I first heard the words âbinge-watchingâ uttered at Netflix, I couldnât believe what I was hearing,â [he writes on Medium](. âMy immediate reaction was that it was a horrible term. After all, the only association I had with the word âbingeâ wasnât âwatching,â it was âpurge.â I thought that if we used that in consumer-facing materials we were going to pay a big price for it.â
Itâs not just the terminology up for dispute. Most of us could stand to move more and sit less, which is at odds with serious couch time. Binge-watching has also been [associated with poor quality sleep](. A [study in 2018]( found that prolonged sedentary behavior during a binge-watch is similar to the nonstop sitting on long-haul flights or when ill, and can also cause blood-clotting in leg veins that can become deadly if they break off and travel to the heart or lungs. It can also [increase depression and other mood disorders]( when isolating for long periods of time. But it may also have real upsides.
Watching a feel-good, low-investment show like Schittâs Creek, Grace & Frankie, or The Good Place may actually be psychologically soothing. As media psychology professor [Elizabeth Cohen explains in The Atlantic]( âThereâs a lot of comfort in knowing when somethingâs going to happen. You donât have to exert a lot of cognitive energy, so it doesnât feel taxing.â Which explains the [small cottage industry]( of [essays about]( how [Parks and Recreation]( is a [balm in troubled times](.
Giphy
poll
Would you rather?
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Watch a movieWatch two hour-long episodes of a dramaWatch four 30-minute episodes of a comedyRead a book
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