Online video content providers, like Netflix and Hulu, are moving into providing original content in hopes of drawing in additional viewers or subscribers. Examples of original content commissioned by online video companies include Netflix’s Lilyhammer and the upcoming revival of Arrested Development, as well as Hulu’s Battleground. In some ways, these services are starting to look more like cable networks, just without an actually schedule. An interesting example of some of the potential implications of this popped up in an interview that Eli Roth and Brian McGreevy gave in the KRCW program “The Business” in April 2012. The topic of the discussion was a series that the two have been working for Netflix called Hemlock Grove.
In the interview, one of the things they discuss is what they see as the difference between working for Netflix as opposed to a more traditional television network. Here’s what they say, roughly transcripted by me. (The entire episode is available through KCRW’s website. This section comes about 23 minutes in.)
McGreevy: . . . the tradition in the network model is the procedural. It’s something that you can shuffle the deck, and . . . pull out any individual episode and watch it out of sequence, because their profits are coming primarily from syndication. With Netflix, they see that, Ok, in this century that’s not actually how people prefer to consume content. They prefer to, what they call quote unquote binge watch, which is, you watch, . . .
Roth: Every episode of Game of Thrones,
McGreevy: Right
Roth: Every episode of Eastbound and Down
McGreevy: And that, that completely changes how you approach the architecture of the season, because you’re designing the entire run to work as a coherent unit.
Roth: It’s like a thirteen-hour movie, because every episode is dropped instantly on one day. So if people want to watch the whole thing straight through, they can. And to us, that was so exciting, because I think that’s how modern people watch movies. They’re watching things on their iPad, they’re watching things at home. They’re not sitting, waiting for nine o’clock. They’re DVR’ing everything and watching it when they can.
Now, there have been prime-time television serial programs – which emphasized a season-long story arc –before Netflix’s streaming services, of course. Lost, for example, required a prodigious memory or repeat viewing to really get a sense of the whole, multi-season story. However, the implication here that the best way to put together a story, presumably in terms of how it’s paced, how much repetition you need, and how many narrative tangents there are, and so on, changes when you’ve got an audience that is watching your show over the course of a few days as opposed to watching over the course of months, is interesting one.
In the world of on-demand media the audience, doesn’t have to wait for a network to dole out one episode of a show a week. They can sit down and watch episode after episode, for hours. Like one, and another is just a click away. Streaming services that make their money from subscriptions or advertising, of course, are just fine with this. The easier it is for you to find something you want to watch, the more money they make. Many systems are actually designed to facilitate it this kind of “binge.” Hulu, for example, has an “autoplay” feature, where the next episode starts immediately after the one before it.
This has a slew of financial implications. Producers need to have substantive number of episodes in the (now exclusively) proverbial can before they launch a series, raising the risk and initial cost. However, one question, still not yet answered, is what the changes in viewing patterns brought about by the shifts technology, profit models, and delivery systems might mean for how the makers of these stories craft the content.
