July 16, 2016. Stranger Things, a Netflix original, is released to rave reviews with a eight episode season. While not being the first big self-produced success to come out of a streaming service, it was the first considered to be an “event”.
Online and in-person discussions were flooded with people asking if they had seen this show yet. This opened an unprecedented floodgate, proving that streaming original releases could have such an impact on the media landscape.
Since then, streaming originals dominate the entertainment landscape. Shows that once would gather families around the television at nine o’clock every Monday night are presented at scattered times across the globe. Now, one can argue that this is slightly more efficient and in some ways it is. But it has, to some, taken away the magic of television.
In a lot of cases, some of the biggest network channels make their own services now, putting their content on exclusive streaming services (AMC+, Disney+, Paramount+, etc). These streaming services are actively taking content that otherwise would have aired normally on a weekly schedule, and instead often releasing it all at once, creating a short hype that would usually last for much longer. Unfortunately, this is becoming a new normal.
This last week, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure released a new twelve episode batch of episodes for an audience of Netflix users, after releasing the last twelve episode batch a full nine months ago. Before Netflix acquired exclusive North America distribution rights, this show came out once every two years for a full run that lasted about a full year with weekly releases (with release breaks) of 48 episode batches, leaving only a year of downtime in which people would regularly talk about their thoughts on the next season.
December 2021, the first 12 episodes of the newest part came out, people talked about them for a week, before people moved on. Now in September 2022, the second batch comes out and only a couple of days later, the hype has already plummeted.
Of course, some people do enjoy the appeal of batch releases. Watch at your own pace until new episodes come out, sure! But most would agree that it is removing a sense of community among lots of fanbases, with most shows no longer holding that sense of interest on what happens next that leads to the conversations that keep these shows popular.
When these shows do not do as well as they once did or end up dying in the water after releasing straight to streaming, one can only ask: “Why?” The answer is batch releases.
Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash
Comments