As a kid, Wednesday nights were sacred in my household. My family would pop popcorn and gather on our family room couch to watch the newest episode of “Modern Family.” Tuesdays were reserved for “The Voice,” Thursdays for “The Office.” The weekly release of my family’s favorite television programming dictated how we spent our week. Getting excited to see what our beloved shows would surprise us with gave us an excuse to spend time together and bond. But as streaming services and binge-watching continue to prove themselves superior to broadcast television, I wonder: is my cherished tradition bound to go extinct?
First, let’s get familiar with some terms. We’ve all heard the term “binge watch,” which is to consume multiple hours of television in one sitting. For the majority of us, this method of TV watching was what we used during quarantine. We sat on our couches and devoured “Tiger King,” looking at our families at the end of each episode to shrug and say, “Maybe just one more?” If a streaming service decides to drop an entire season of a show in one day, that’s called the binge release model. It’s curated to allow audiences to soak up every minute of their favorite shows as soon as possible, therefore increasing customer satisfaction. Binge releases were originated by Netflix and a majority, if not all, of their shows continue to use it. Think of fan favorites like “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game” and “Bridgerton.” Binge releases capitalize on FOMO to get audiences to watch the entirety of the series as quickly as possible. If you don’t watch the full season within the week it’s released, you miss hopping on the bandwagon. You miss the Twitter memes and fan theories and gushing over newly-loved characters.
And this pressure works. In 2020 alone, Netflix gained over 37 million subscribers. Although it seems too fast, too chaotic, too much content to handle, the binge release method has effectively skyrocketed over the past few years.
On the other hand, we have ole faithful: the weekly release method. This was my childhood, your childhood and the staple format of broadcast television since its inception. Weekly releases mean exactly that, choosing one day of the week to drop episodes until the full season has been released. As an avid lover of television and mortal enemy of change, I adore weekly releases. Think of shows like “Euphoria,” “Ted Lasso,” “Only Murders in the Building” or “Succession.” They remind us all of the television experience: it’s not supposed to be hours of mind-numbing content; it’s supposed to be a reason for you and your friends to get together and laugh or cry for an hour or so. Streaming services like Hulu and HBO Max have stayed true to this traditional strategy and proved that Netflix is not the sole titan of the streaming industry.
The second season of “Euphoria” was one of the most successful releases in the past year. Its finale brought in 6.6 million viewers, a number HBO Max hasn’t seen since the “Game of Thrones” series finale. Think how annoyed you got with constantly hearing discourse about “Euphoria”; it was all anyone could talk about for what seemed like months. And that’s the beauty of the weekly release. It draws out the viewers’ experience, building suspense, maintaining connections to the characters and letting a larger conversation cultivate over weeks instead of just a few days.
Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” caught on to this trend and rode it all the way to seven Emmy wins and 20 nominations. Television analysts believe that a substantial reason that “Ted Lasso” swept so many Emmy categories is because of the weeks of praise and conversation that it generated over its release period, a kind of success that is unheard of with binge releases. With its early episodes being released during the national lockdown, “Lasso” was the comic relief that we all needed, and its producers did a beautiful job of spreading that lightheartedness over several weeks rather than dropping a happiness bomb on us for only a few days. It’s the prime example that even if broadcast television may be dying, its fundamentals never will.
Clearly, I prefer weekly releases. But if we look at the question of release strategies objectively, what works best? Why would television bother to change its age-old, timeless and effective release strategy? If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it, right? I don’t think the emergence of the binge release was necessarily due to the lack of love for broadcast television, but instead to keep up with the evolving nature of streaming services. As audiences got accustomed to having any show available to us whenever we wanted, we got impatient. We don’t want to have to wait another week for another episode, we want to sit on our couch and watch it all now! Streaming services understood that and readjusted to meet the audience’s needs.
However, we don’t always have to choose for ourselves. There is a middle ground, some way to keep viewers invested in the story over a period of time while also letting them fully indulge themselves. This is a newer model of releasing, some refer to it as the “hybrid approach” or the “demi-binge”, or when a series releases its first three or so episodes all at once and then the remainder of the season on a weekly basis. Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” as well as Apple TV+’s “Physical” and “The Shrink Next Door” found major success with this hybrid model, proving that maybe audiences need to be hooked at first in order to become devoted fans. I watched all three of these series and loved them all.
As I await the inevitable season twos, I can’t help but feel a little tricked, as if the streaming services intricately designed these releases to capture my attention. But that’s not a bad thing, especially because I went on to tell my friends to watch each of those series. Other streaming services are also hearing the rave reviews and adjusting accordingly. Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has changed its release strategy after three wildly successful seasons using the binge release method. For its upcoming fourth season, they will release two episodes a week over four weeks rather than dropping all eight episodes at once. So who knows, maybe streaming and broadcast television have found their happy medium.
Maybe my beloved Wednesday night television programming is not long gone. Television is still bringing us together, still creating conversation and generating laughs, no matter how it’s presented to us. We can still cuddle our loved ones on the couch and watch our favorite shows, just some nights we may be able to watch full seasons instead of just one episode. No matter how television continues to revamp, rework and remodel, I’ll still be cooped up in my living room, eagerly awaiting the next episode.
