Tyler Cowen :: Will marathon viewing become the TV norm?
On Friday, Netflix will release a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting: “House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh.
Ad-financed shows — still a clear majority of viewing — may prefer to have impressions from the ads spread out over weeks and months rather than concentrated in one long marathon sitting.
On the other hand, when watching an hour long show — or even a half-hour — I routinely see the same ad multiple times. Not ads for the same product or service, but the very same advertisement. I am sure there is a lot of literature about the trade-offs between repetition and staleness to doing this. (Note to self: ask about this at the next marketing quant lunch.)
Cowen continues:
Furthermore the show itself relies more heavily on an effective and immediate burst of concentrated marketing, with little room to build word of mouth and roll out a campaign with stages.
Yes, you lose word-of-mouth, but you also lose the inevitable week-to-week decay as people drop out of the viewership pool. Most TV shows show a remarkably consistent exponential decay in viewership. It's not at all clear to me that the gaining from WOM and the losing from audience decay is preferable to having neither.
This is being framed as a contest between watching 13 episodes in one day and watching them over four months. My wife and I have been watching one episode of "House of Cards" every day or so. I think this middle ground may be a better solution than either extreme. A two week roll-out keeps viewers focused and concentrates marketing, but doesn't roll the dice on one big push.
Note that Netflix has an advantage that other outlets don't: they can continue to advertise the show for free through their service. This won't drive new members to subscribe, but I think they benefit even when existing members watch the show. True, it doesn't boost revenue, but racking up higher viewership both makes it easier for them to create high-quality shows in the future, and it strengthens their in-house productions as a bargaining chip when negotiating with other content producers and distributors, which I think is the real value of "House of Cards."
One media market which is still highly serialized and has clearly not come to grips with the implications of that is comics. Here is just one recent piece about this. People have been fretting over the serialization-vs-collection transition and the friction it causes since I started reading comics six years ago, and they don't seem any closer to resolving the tension.
PS "House of Cards" is very highly recommended. I haven't had a show I was this excited about binge-watching in a couple of years.