Every Wednesday this summer, Nanaki Nagra knew what her plans were as she tuned in to that week's episode. The summer in which I became Pr.Etty on Amazon Prime Video.
Talking to her friends or like-minded fans on Reddit about what they thought might happen next or which characters they were rooting for helped her get through the week while she waited for the next episode to air.
“I’ve been excited all summer,” Nagra said. “This [was] I like my little thing and then I can talk to people about it on the Internet.” If she can't clear her schedule on Wednesday evenings, she'll make up for it by Thursday afternoon.
It was a new experience for Nagra – most of the shows she had enjoyed in the past had already been released in their entirety on streaming platforms, meaning all the episodes could be watched at any time.
But Nagra says he's watching more shows that air weekly, e.g. Summer when I became beautiful and HBO Pitt — which changed her viewing experience.
“It definitely made it an event,” Nagra said.
If this sounds like a throwback to the days of traditional must-see TV viewing, that's because it mostly is.
Changing release styles
As more shows move to a weekly release schedule, it gives viewers the opportunity to watch episodes as they happen and participate in the same cultural moment, but experts suggest what's happening is more of a middle ground between destination viewing and binge-watching.
Nagra's Favorites aren't the only series releasing episodes weekly or in installments.
First batch of episodes of the final season Stranger Things came out last week and attracted so many viewers at the same time that Netflix crashed minutes after the episodes became available.
Reality type show Love is blind And Love Island people were so excited about the ending that they decided to gather in houses and bars to watch parties.
And the water cooler effect was alive and well for AppleTV's Severance, which spawned discussion around fan theories and themes of work-life balance, and fans flocked to exciting events.
From watching TV to overeating and back again
Vilde Schanke Sundet, professor of media communications at Oslo Metropolitan University, says streaming platforms, especially Netflix, which was an early player in the streaming game, sold themselves to the idea that viewers can watch whatever they wantd whenever they want to watch it.
“We could decide for ourselves,” Sundet said. “We didn’t have to wait for the schedule, we didn’t have to wait for Sunday night.”
This, she said, led to the emergence of the binge-watching format, where viewers could watch full seasons of a TV show over the course of several days or even in one sitting.
Recent surveys show that more Canadians are binge-watching TV and binge-watching entire series in one sitting.
But as the streaming space has become crowded with other players and endless content options, Sundet says, many viewers have found themselves confused and unable to decide what to watch.
Since then, she and other researchers have documented how streamers have adopted some old-school TV traditions, such as returning to staggered releases, and have included live-streaming options for awards show And sport.
While many streamers who made their names through binge-watching have recently moved toward more frequent, targeted viewing, the situation is more of a middle ground between the two, said Bridget Rubenking, an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of Central Florida.
“Streaming services just don't have the full ability… to say, 'Sit down and watch this today,'” Rubenking said.
She doesn't think there will ever be a full return to meeting viewing now that users have gotten a taste of flexible streaming offerings.
But she says staggered releases allow fans to get the best of both worlds: They can collect multiple episodes and watch them all at once if they prefer to binge-watch, or watch weekly if they want to be part of the cultural moment the show is experiencing.
While streaming giants carefully guard their strategies andd view figures, netFlix managers said during company earnings calls that they found that viewers liked it when episodes were released in chunks as it gave them more new content to look forward to and also allowed people to watch multiple episodes in one sitting.
Amber Dowling, a TV critic and entertainment reporter based in Toronto, says the return to weekly episodes has helped create a level of pre-recorded viewing habit among fans.
But she says the release format alone isn't enough to get people to watch the show the moment it comes out—the show also needs to create a sense of excitement because there was a long wait between seasons (as was the case with Stranger Things), or because the storyline is so exciting (according to viewers For many I'll tell you).
Dowling notes that Netflix series that have succeeded through staggered releases or live action are usually “shows that have already built an audience” and have a loyal following.
She says that while there hasn't been a real must-see show that airs weekly since then, Game of Thrones ended in 2019, as Netflix unfolds Stranger Things During the holidays, when people have more free time to spend in front of screens, the finale of this series could be just as interesting. big deal. The next three episodes will air on Christmas Day, with the final episode airing on New Year's Eve.
In addition, she notes, Netflix is filming the final episode of the series. Stranger Things available in cinemasvery similar HBO did with Game of Thrones.
Timely viewing is driven by the social aspect
Unlike the days when TV viewers had no choice but to watch their favorite shows at specific times, this partial return to by-appointment viewing is a choice for people who want to be part of the cultural conversation, Sundet says.
Watching as soon as the latest episode comes out does not allow viewingfrom being spoiled and all thatinvites them to take part in pleasant conversations about shows that are a cultural touchstone.
“The social aspect of being a fan is… half the fun,” Sundet said.
Rubenking agrees. She says Netflix's early strategy was to simply acquire as many shows as possible so there was something for everyone. But that meant people weren't always watching the same thing, which she said minimized the show's cultural impact.
“You should have watched this British dark noir mystery thriller, which was not what I was watching,” Rubenking said. “And then we wouldn’t be able to talk about it.”
She says it now seems like some of these cultural conversations are starting to come back, even if they don't span as many different demographics or reach as many people as they once did.
For TV fans like Nagra, this new style is definitely a conversation starter.
During Welcome Week at McMaster University in Hamilton, where she is studying, Nagra wore an outfit emblazoned with references to Summer when I became beautiful. As a result, she said, many people approached her to talk about which couple they thought would end up together by the end.
She doesn't think The show would have made such a splash if it had been released on streaming in one fell swoop.
“It was like a warm hug [with] everyone was just as excited about it as I was and, you know, I feel like I'm in the know,” Nagra said.
