Thursday, January 30, 2014

Who thought binging could be so good?

Binge watching has become a part of many of our lives, myself included.  Most people have started to prefer to watch their shows on demand, and set aside long periods of time to catch up or just crank through a new season all in one go.  The average number of episodes per binge watch is 2.3, so those full day blow outs aren’t becoming common practices just yet.

Netflix has been leading this revolution of on-demand and binge watching TV shows, and I for one have embraced it.  I have countless episodes at my fingertips just waiting to be watched.  How could I resist?

These changes create a whole new concept of the television world.  Instead of people asking “Did you see that episode last night?” it’s more of, “Did you finish that show yet?” 

Is binging necessarily a good thing?  Users say yes, with 73% saying it is a positive thing.  However, I think too much of anything can prove to be harmful. If as a society we decide this is the best way to watch television, by spending 3+ hours at a time in front of a screen, then maybe this isn’t a good thing.

http://on.mash.to/1bElK7S

3 comments:

  1. I heard a great point about binge watching through a radio show on WXXI a few months ago.

    They said that we have been formatted to enjoy binge watching throughout our whole lives. An example is Saturday morning cartoons, which usually have hour or two hour blocks of the same program. When we were younger cable television also had "marathons" on Saturday and Sunday of the same show back to back; for five or more hours straight.

    Netflix really just picked up and monopolized on a habit we already had programmed in us.

    I also do binge watch a lot of TV series through Netflix but I do think I still watch less TV than I did when I watched cable TV. I also tend to watch Netflix more attentively then I ever watched Cable TV with interrupting commercials.

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  2. This binge watching is definitely becoming a problem. Although I barely watch Netflix, it's all my roommate ever does. I think Netflix and other online television websites are only increase the problem of binge watching because there are no commercials.

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  3. I have to say that I'm a big fan of being able to watch a entire season of a show without having to wait for the next episode to come out. But, this probably does more harm than good when it comes to productivity.

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