Netflix dumping entire new seasons at once kills the communal viewing experience

Cafe Society
1

It was too long for the title, but I specifically mean the way that they dump a new season of their new, original shows a season at a time, available for anyone to binge through at their own pace.

There’s something appealing or sort of romantic about the way there used to be only 3 networks. TV watching was a communal experience - there is a very high likelihood that a significant fraction of the population was watching the same show last night. You’d be on the same page and could discuss it at the water cooler. Now, I’m not saying that’s better than what we have now, because it’s not, but we have largely lost the communal feeling of sharing TV.

After that, we developed hundreds of channels. On-demand. TiVos and DVRs. That all fragmented the previously fairly unified TV market. And generally, that’s way better, because everyone has way more options to suit what they want, and because different networks are willing to try different things, some of the greatest shows ever made probably wouldn’t have been made on the traditional broadcast model.

But viewership became fragmented. Only for the most popular shows was there a lot of water cooler (or here in cafe society) discussion of episodes as they aired. Things like Lost (piece of crap that it was) or Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones ended up being able to unite us in our watching habits as we were hooked on them and all watched new episodes as soon as they were available, and it generated that shared experience and a lot of discussion. So even though the average TV show wasn’t a communal experience like it used to be, some really compelling ones still were.

Netflix breaks even this model. At least with the previous stage I referred to, we were all watching the same episode of the same time. Only a few iconic shows got us all on the same page, but we were all on the same page.

But Netflix decided to differentiate themselves from traditional broadcast, that they’d drop the entire season of a new original show at once. So even if we were all watching the same show - I think Black Mirror would be an iconic show just like Lost/Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones - now we’re not watching episodes together anymore.

Some people would binge the whole new season in a night. Some people would space out their viewing to build some anticipation between episodes and not overload on it. You couldn’t know where other people were at, so it became hard to have discussions. We have seasonal discussion for black mirror threads, but they’re a mess. People are cross-talking to each other about episodes that some people in the thread watched, and some people haven’t. If you weren’t a binge watcher, finishing the new season on day 1, and you didn’t want to see discussion for the other episodes, you basically had to stay out of the thread until you finished the whole season.

I like to not watch an episode more than once every few days. I feel like the time between episodes benefits the watching experience, because if you just blast right through it you miss something. Which means that when I was done with each episode, and wanted to go discuss it somewhere, I couldn’t, because I’d just get caught up in that thread where people were talking about all the episodes at once, most of which I haven’t seen. So I had to wait a couple of weeks to participate, and by then the discussion had died down.

I, personally, think this model is a failure for that reason. It strips TV shows of the communal experience they sometimes still have. Other major streaming services seem to agree, because only Netflix does the season drop. Other streaming services still air new episodes to original content once a week.

There’s also something in it for them - people will tend to subscribe longer for the new episodes if they want to see them as they come out. Of course you can bypass this by waiting until the whole new season has aired and then watching it all in the span of one month’s subscription.

Even so, I strongly prefer the weekly episode format for new, original streaming shows, because the last vestiges of that sense of community that we sometimes see have value.

In fact, if it doesn’t run afoul of any sort of Cafe Society rules, I’m going to try to make 6 episode threads for Black Mirror when season 5 airs. I know that’s a lot of threads at once, but it solves the problems I mentioned with cross-discussion between episodes and people who watch the show more slowly being unable to discuss it. The episode discussion will be cleaner (just about that episode) and people can take them at their own pace without risk of spoilers for other episodes.

2

Agreed; I much prefer Hulu’s model of releasing episodes weekly.

3

I don’t care one tiny iota about “communal viewing experience”, having entire seasons to watch at my own pace is vastly superior to any other format that i cannot imagine going back to weekly shows. The only thing that would be better is having the entire show released at once.

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I’m with the OP; it was fun to watch a show and be able to talk about it with others at work (or even earlier, at school) the next day.

The OP mentioned Lost, and yes, the ending was disappointing. But we had a lot of fun here talking about it and wondering what it all meant. (Was that a polar bear? What was that smoke monster thing?) That people binge shows is one reason that’s no longer possible. But another reason is the extreme fragmentation of the TV marketplace. The Big Bang Theory gets something like 20 million viewers, which puts it at the top of the ratings. Even as recently as twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have put it in the top ten. Lots of shows have only a couple of million viewers. Part of the issue is that there’s so much to watch; over 500 shows across all platforms.

6

I prefer weekly viewing for the initial run. I can discuss the episode at work or on message boards.

It’s why I still watch network tv shows.

Later, I may binge watch an old show. Usually 4 episodes at a time. 4 hours is my limit per day.

7

The communal viewing experience has been a positive for me twice: GOT and Breaking Bad. Every other show I prefer the ability to watch at my own pace. So Netflix dropping seasons at a time doesn’t bother me at all.

8

I don’t agree. By letting people watch the show when they want to, more people see it, and thus there are more people you can discuss it with. Sure, you now you have to ask if they’ve seen it before you talk about it, but you’re more likely to find someone who watched it than you were when people might’ve watched something else.

It’s also easier than ever to find groups of people who are fans of the show and get together and talk with them, thanks to the Internet. I get into much more in depth conversations about the things I watched than I ever did before. It isn’t just the small talk it was before, where you only talk about it to have an excuse to talk about something.

I will agree that having separate threads in a forum for different episodes makes a lot more sense, especially for an anthology show where the ideas are completely separate.The reason we don’t do that so much here has more to do with space considerations, in my opinion. And, yes, releasing everything at once does make that less workable, as you can’t segregate the single thread by time.

But that’s not the communal experience. That’s just a posting style on a single non-specialized message board. Any forum actually about the show will have separate threads, and a rule that you can’t talk about future stuff in past episode threads.

I’m all for separate threads for different episodes, though. It seems silly to do it any other way for an anthology show. Heck, I’ve only watched certain episodes–the ones with a premise I like.

9

There are plenty of shows that only air weekly – just not on streaming. We talk here about The Good Place every week and will certainly continue to do so when it comes back. I’ve discussed Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I know people discuss the CW superhero shows.

And it’s ultimately trivial. Take Lucifer. When it was on the air, people would discuss it each week. Now we have a thread discussing it after the person saw it on Netflix and speculating on what might be happening. When Netflix releases it, there will be another thread. Some people will binge and jump right in; others, like me, will take some time to appreciate it (You can enjoy a show more if you wait a day or more to see another episode – it gives you time to consider what happened and think about implications instead of getting force fed them).

People are also discussing The Orville here.

So what you’re saying is simply that people won’t discuss episodes of streaming shows. Network shows won’t have any difference, and the networks are putting some very good stuff on the air.

10

I didn’t like the idea at first, but I’ve warmed up to it. I don’t want to binge a whole ten episodes in one weekend, but I do like being able to see the whole season in a reasonable 2-3 weeks. I don’t want to wait around 10 weeks for the end of Killing Eve, Veep or Barry.

11

If a show comes out weekly it’s more likely there will be better discussions of it, internet and real life both. But I much prefer the personal viewing experience at one to two episodes per night. I guess the second outweighs the first for me though and I find it annoying now to have wait a week between episodes of a show.

12

The CS issue could be dealt with easily if people would just state what episode they are on at the beginning of every post.

That way, other readers that are behind know not to read it.

13

We lost a little something. Discussions of individual episodes on discussion boards definitely suffered. But that’s the price you pay for progress. I wouldn’t go back to the old days.

14

That genie is long out of the bottle. The technology has change the landscape and it will never go back. Although I do understand what you mean I do like being able to see a show and discuss it But the downside is just too great. I don’t have time to watch all the shows I want when they come on. I don’t know how many shows I had to abandon because I fell too far behind. Now I never have to fall behind.

It’s kind of like how with current technology has destroyed consuming albums. My daughter will never know the pleasure of getting a new album and listening to every song and finding those hidden gems that you will never hear on the radio. People just don’t consume music that way anymore.

15

I love that I can watch things whenever I want to, including a whole season at once. But I do know what you mean. I think of my daughter-in-law and I kind of dancing around the issue of which episode we’d got to, without giving out an actual spoiler (Oh, have you made it to the episode where this character does this thing?)

But I have seen some discussion groups (hm, I don’t know what to call them, I guess this works) online where they do, in fact, take the show episode by episode.

16

It’s hardest for me not being able to join in with the conversations here if I am only up to episode three and everyone else is talking about episode seventeen, and the discussion for where I’m up to is lost back on page five someplace, which was only yesterday but is already well hashed out. There’s no way around it, it’s certainly not the SDMB’s fault, separate threads per episode is too complicated. I just stay out until I’m done, which is usually three weeks after the thread has died.

17

My schedule is so variable there’s no way in hell I could commit to being in front of the TV on X day at Y time - which is why over the years I have missed a LOT of TV shows and the “communal experience” that goes with them. Half the shows I own on DVD is because I wasn’t home to watch then when they were broadcast.

I probably have more “communal experience” discussing shows now because, with streaming, I can actually watch all of something.

There’s nothing stopping people from watching just one show a night, or one show a week. On the other hand, I range from “no time at all” some days/nights to “hey, I’m off today, it’s raining/snowing/whatever so I’m going to binge for half a day” so I like being able to watch when it’s convenient for me.

18

Everyone talking about the same TV show at the water cooler was probably much less a heart-warming experience than the OP imagines, considering how crappy most TV was. It probably was friggin’ annoying, more than anything. But then maybe it was all the same, because everyone’s mental capacity had been diminished so much by all the imbecilic commercials they had to sit through during this communal experience.

19

They’re talking about quality episodic shows like Star Trek TNG, or Twin Peaks, or The Sopranos, not forgettable pabulum like Space Above and Beyond or Full House.

20

I enjoyed watching Mad Men and then having the weekly Monday morning chew over the meaning and what next week might hold and little details people caught. I think that was the last show I made of catching as it aired, largely because the threads added to the experience and helped me fully appreciate each episode before jumping into the next.

I agree that it’s probably “too late now”, etc but that doesn’t mean I can’t miss it. I don’t fully agree with the “At my own pace” people since the show will be out there for ages to watch. If you want to watch all of it in one weekend, just wait until all the episodes are released and watch them a zillion times in a row if you want. That said, you probably already won the ‘debate’ so I’m just grumbling.