Expert Opinion | Viewer Behaviour
their content direct to the audience (for instance, HBO is investing heavily in its online offering), businesses that have traditionally profited from delivering that content themselves are looking to create their own.
Netfix is probably the most high profile example of this. Having built a business from making other people’s content available on-demand on a subscription basis, it is now making its own shows with Kevin Spacey starring in House of Cards earlier this year. Netflix has been open about the fact that convergence is driving this strategy, with the company’s chief content office admitting that “the goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”
In many ways, Netflix typifies another major change in viewer behaviour. Rather than release episodes of House of Cards a week at a time, Netflix opted to make the whole series available all at once. Many people have discussed how this approach – making everything accessible, instantly – is helping to create a ‘binge-viewing’ culture, with viewers racing through entire series in a single evening or weekend rather than over several months.
Some are concerned that this binging behaviour will in itself change the content we consume, with shows already leaning towards shorter series of 10-13 episodes rather than the 20+ that was common in the The West Wing era. The creator of Heroes, Tim Kring, also spoke at MIP this month about this issue. He was more relaxed about the impact binge-viewing might have on content, comparing it to the way that pop songs or films have found an optimum length over time and emphasising that any medium will always need to adapt to its audience’s expectations and attention spans.
There is no doubt that, as changing viewing habits both enable and necessitate new business models, the nature of the shows we watch will also change and there are arguments to be made for both sides about whether this will extend or curtail this ‘Golden Age’. Ultimately however, the quality of the TV industry’s output can speak for itself and, despite the transitions at the heart of the industry, I suspect that audiences will have plenty of great shows to enjoy in the years to come.
Golden Age Before The Web...
1975 Home Box Office begins satellite distribution of TV; Ted Turner starts first “superstation”
1975 Sony Betamax home videocassette recorder introduced
1976 Matsushita introduces VHS
1978 Laser disc player introduced; largely a failure, but opened door for CDs
1980 “Who Shot J.R.?” on “Dallas” is first TV season-ending cliff-hanger
1981 MTV first airs; first video is “Video Killed the Radio Star”
1982 Home shopping network debuts 1983 Sony introduces CD player
1990s Internet access opened to general public; changes everything
compiled by Prof. Jim McPherson, Whitworth College
ibeconnects.com | May/June 2013
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