Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Before streaming services became wildly popular in the 2010s, shows were primarily enjoyed on cable or broadcast through your TV. To stay up to date on your favorite series and avoid spoilers, you had to be ready to tune in at 8/7 Central… Or else. If you missed it, you were forced to wait until an eventual re-run, avoiding spoilers at all costs. This FOMO culture generated hype and consequential devotion for broadcast shows, fostering a long-standing relationship with a story and its characters, who frequently took precedence over real-world responsibilities.
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Shows produced for streaming tell a much different story, according to Hollywood Reporter editor Steven Zeitchik. He says that streaming shows are constructed with a short-term focus in mind. “They’re meant to dominate quickly, and then they’re meant to go away just as fast.” As a result, it has become clear that shows produced for streaming have a far lower chance of sticking around. Unlike broadcast-formatted shows like Grey's Anatomy and NCIS, which boast a twenty-year history on viewership leaderboards, modern TV shows born to be binged often struggle to last even twenty weeks before disappearing into obsolescence. “We simply have too much to watch for anyone to stick around,” says Zeitchik. “Media and human attention spans are shortening, making it hard for a show to keep chugging.”
Something is definitely lost when a show comes and goes so fast, which is why binge-formatted series burn hot and quick, leaving our lives just as quickly as they entered them. Because of this, we don’t fall in love with TV shows anymore, and audiences no longer form the same deep connection to binged shows. Streaming has transformed our relationship with TV from a long-term partnership to a flashbang fling.
When it comes to television, the human fascination with dramatic storytelling is amplified, capitalizing on our instinct to immerse ourselves in the lives of characters around us, real or fictional. Broadcast shows may offer the same volume of content, but they are broken up over the course of several months, allowing audiences to simmer in the events of last week’s episode, while building hype for the next installment. “This is why sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between actors and their characters,” says Catherine Salmon, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Redlands. “They feel as if they know them because they ‘know’ a character they played.”
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Broadcast shows made lasting impressions on their audiences over the course of months, years, and in some cases, decades. Since the boom of streaming platforms, TV-watching habits have diverged, creating two types of audiences with very different needs. Sometimes audiences crave a long-term relationship, and some just want a quick and intense love affair, and there is merit to both approaches.
Bingeworthy Beauties
Critically acclaimed shows, some even regarded as “perfect” in the cinemasphere and considered works of art by audiences, would never survive a week-to-week broadcast model. Dark (2019), a German Netflix original series that unravels a multigenerational web of secrets, inescapable fates, and time travel, features some of the most complex yet perfectly crafted narratives in TV history. It is dramatic, intense, thrilling, and heart-wrenching. However, because the storyline is so intricate, the show would be impossible to follow if viewers had to wait seven days for each new episode. Although it is a masterpiece in its own right, like many modern binge-worthy shows, Dark will never reach the long-standing acclaim it deserves. Because of Dark’s bingeable format, audiences lose the opportunity to let the story simmer. Unlike the broadcast-formatted favorite Lost (2004), a comparably thrilling and complicated series that aired on CBS over the course of six years.
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In fact, studies from First Monday Academic Journal have found that shows that are binge-watched are actually less memorable. “Although binge watching leads to strong memory formation immediately following program viewing, these memories decay more rapidly than memories formed after daily or weekly episode viewing schedules.” This finding aligns perfectly with the new streaming models of content consumption, in which shows are designed to be devoured quickly before audiences move on to the next hot topic. Netflix famously promotes this kind of TV show infidelity because it sustains their subscription base.
To TV purists, there will always be something magical about broadcast television and the loyalty it inspires.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Some shows are meant to be binged, and that is okay. Modern streaming platforms gave rise to a completely new series format, which diverges from the old model and creates a new way to watch stories. More complex and intricate than ever, binge formats have fostered legendary and critically acclaimed shows that audiences will inevitably forget.
While the binge format is fun, mind-bending, and captivating, there is something nostalgic and powerful about the slow-burning cadence of the old TV model. As audiences follow their favorite stories on a weekly basis, they ruminate on character-building plotlines and suspense, falling in love and escaping to new worlds every Thursday at 8, just like the rest of the fandom.
Now there are two ways to watch TV, and it is up to producers to decide how they want their audiences to feel. Mystified by a flash-bang fling or deeply moved by a long-haul love story? True series lovers will gladly accept both.