Before Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus launched in November 2019, it was expected by some media-tech analysts and video industry pundits that the strategy of stacking entire seasons of shows, pioneered by the company that started the business, Netflix, would be the dominant release paradigm of TV's streaming future.
At the time, it was the way each of the Big Three SVOD services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, released all of their original series.
Analysts including LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield urged media companies to think less like TV network schedulers of decades past and more like the Silicon Valley giants who were (still are?) taking over their business.
"Every one of them wants users to spend as much time as possible in their ecosystem. Each tech platform keeps expanding the number of things for users to do on their platform," Greenfield blogged last year, adding that media companies were not "optimizing' properly for consumer digital "addiction" by still adhering to a weekly schedule.
Meanwhile, the pioneer of the whole binge-enabling strategy has insisted all along that back to back to back viewing is simply a more natural way to watch television.
“Like reading a whole book in one night, it’s a normal experience to do that," Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings said on a panel back in 2014, noting that the strategy could revolutionize the TV business.
But as the wheelchair-bound Big Lebowski might say, "Your revolution is over, Hastings!"
None of the six subscription streaming services that launched after November 1, 2019 -- Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, Peacock, HBO Max, Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus -- ended up adopting stacked, all-at-once releasing. In fact, with each of these services enduring their nascent stages amid hindered pandemic production environments, the production volume needed to sustain the strategy might not have even been feasible.
Hulu, which had begun to fall in line with Netflix and Hulu, releasing comedy originals including the Emmy-nominated Ramy several years ago in a stacked format, has moved to a hybrid model. For instance, limited biography series Pam and Tommy debuted its first three episodes on Feb. 2, but the remaining five installments began unfurling weekly starting Wednesday (Feb. 9).
Amazon, meanwhile, looks to be pulling back from binge-enabling. In December, it began trickling out the six Season 6 episodes of sci-fi series The Expanse one per week. And this summer, Amazon Prime Video will adopt Hulu's hybrid model for Season 3 of The Boys, debuting the first three episodes on June 3 before posting each of the subsequent five installments weekly.
If there was a general video industry buzz about the binging trend cooling a little, paywalled insider news scoop site The Information ramped it up earlier this week with a report suggesting that even Netflix is rethinking the all-at-once strategy ... if only just a bit. According to the site, scrapping the strategy altogether isn't being considered, but Netflix is looking for a more efficient way to deploy its $17.5 billion content budget.
Notably, Netflix last month, hired Andy Kubitz, the executive who used to head scheduling and strategy for the ABC Television Network.
“To expect a new series a week is a very expensive habit to fill,” HBO Max Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys told The Information. ■
