Confessions of a Binge Viewer
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
When I spoke with students in a Television Course some decades ago the central theme of what I was describing to them about the future of television was the problem of time. I was suggesting a future where their delivery system would be orbiting overhead and where programming could be ‘packaged’ for delivery without consideration of the time it takes. I was trying to tell them about the changing “temporal” nature of the medium at that time (this was back in the mid-70s).
I told them if someone wished to view all the episodes of a serialized TV show as a single purchase they would be able to order it from a video on demand service and how it could be pushed onto their own recording system at speeds much faster than it takes to deliver by analog or broadcast means. I can’t claim someone in that room went on to invent a better delivery system (and is now a multi-billionaire) but I was hoping someone who might work in this field would hold this notion long enough to see a possible future as it became a reality.
Reports are appearing now which suggest a new category to be included in audience calculations for network/broadcast/pay/cable television has finally emerged. This group are known as the “nevers” — those who have never paid for TV. Well, in the sense they would pay to connect their TV to a cord which charged for delivery of a clean signal containing hundreds of channels of content. I think around the time broadcast channels made the jump to digital delivery this group had already established itself on the fringes of the audience field. Today they represent an outer ring of influence from which the future of TV may have to seek its answers. Questions have been debated since the peak popularity of video rental outlets about how much longer people will be paying fees for content delivery “in real time”.
Here is where the confession part comes in.
Because I was in the industry for so long I have benefited from not always having to pay for these signals. I’ve been fortunate to sample hundreds of channels and judge for myself the merits of bundled groupings sold for their subscriber value and not their content. I have had the chance to watch local broadcast and network affiliate stations in my market go through a host of ‘transitions’ only to see their audiences move to other outlets for the same information services. I have sat behind a person watching the news on their phone while riding a bus home from work. I have watched Facebook™ invade the workplace and take away the focus of staff. I have been fortunate to be a member of the production community while advances in recording, editing, distribution, and archiving have smashed through their established suppliers. And, today, I can confess how I too have become comfortable with watching large amounts of television content in very short periods of time.
In recent years I have experienced a dramatic transformation of my media consumption choices. As each new device was connected and each new service became available — and as my local disc rental outlet saw most of its competition close their doors — my viewing behaviour has changed. I no longer make an appointment with my TV to watch something in real time. My PVR was the final nail in that coffin. Real time TV is now dead to me**.
I can still see much of what is out there by either capturing it or seeking it from the VOD service and I can find other content I may have missed the first time around by watching boxed sets of DVDs to “catch up on it”.
My iTunes account reports how I have moved from renting single episodes of programs to pre-ordering entire series. Like having heard a ‘single’ on AM radio I am now buying the band’s whole album in anticipation of listening to it on cool autumn evenings. So I am pleased to be able to know I will be getting good value for my billing list for years to come.
My Netflix™ account wants me to know what other people have been watching. It also wants me to know they are becoming their own network channel. As much as I have already seen most of their movie collection, I am sometimes pleased to discover something unexpected from their listings; enough to warrant the fee.
Time is the real issue here.
If the context changes from “when” a bit of content is being shown on TV to “where” I can access (or acquire) the same content then the only limitations (at this particular point in the continuum of network bandwidth expansion) is how much data this content represents. The viewing time can be displaced easily with storage media and cloud-based services.
It isn’t enough to say the “game has changed” with respect to getting access to content, but, more importantly, the game is over with respect to sponsoring, advertising-supported, rate-card revenue, and AAA (triple-a) time slots.
Primetime is any time.
On a recent vacation to Mexico I loaded up my iPad with episodes of a series we follow on our BBC iPlayer™ app, purchased episodes we had not yet watched from iTunes, and another series from a kiddie show I knew was a particular two-year-old’s favourite. All could fit on the iPad, all could be watched easily (though without the convenience of the AirPlay to my AppleTV), and I did not even need the hotel WiFi to be as robust as I have in my home.
In my home it becomes even more apparent where I am not just “time-shifting” in the usual sense of a VCR and live signal, but I am receiving gigabytes of data very quickly from some server and storing them wherever I want them to be. No longer is the prime viewing device for television the TV set. No longer is network TV my only viewing choice. Podcasting has emerged (for me) to be a growing area of interesting content.
Yes, my TV set has an HD cable box with a PVR, and yes I admit I still have a Blu-Ray player in case I need to view a disk someone gifts me, but overall I begin to expect much more of my viewing to happen at times when I am ready to watch, can get access immediately (or fairly easily) and the cost of it declines continually from increasing competition between sources.
As a professional producer, who has lived through the miniaturization of tape formats until they vanished altogether, I benefit from the “copying to edit machine” capability of modern, card-based, video cameras. Digitizing tape to a non-linear machine was such a waste of my time that I tried desperately to avoid buying it until what I really needed was eventually commonplace.
On the other side of the lens, as a consumer of TV content, I think my waiting out the process has started to show signs of ROI, which will continue to put a lot of content distributors into new boxes* while disrupting their previous revenue models.
This is also having a profound effect on content production.
As with almost every other innovation or even advancement of storage media in this business there is always a secondary effect on the content itself. The medium changes while simultaneously the medium changes the content it carries.
The development of the Steadicam™ had the effect of making “shakey cam” the new style of filmmaking. That we are now able to take all the shake out of a shot, it becomes the style to exaggerate camera movement to suggest tension, immediacy, and invoke a documentary feel of ‘reality’ to a completely scripted and rehearsed scene.
The development of smaller and more portable camera systems meant a camera could go into smaller and smaller spaces and be less and less obvious to those being videotaped. The capacity of most “smart” cellphones to record HD [and 4K] video is the ultimate expression of this trend. This miniaturization changed the content from a carefully constructed narrative form into a free-form interpretive dance kind of YouTube™ storytelling in which coherence is not a requirement but irony rules. Not to forget the explosion of GoPro first-person action footage.
As non-linear editing systems became more capable of dealing with the overwhelming amount of footage a digital camera could contain it also allowed an acceleration of the presentation to a frantic and compelling speed requiring a viewer to focus their attention more deeply then ever before to apprehend the message. More simply put, the capability of the editing environment allowed an editor or producer to include more cuts-per-second than ever before at almost no additional cost. Mostly because the system could do this more quickly in the digital realm than any physical system could shuttle the tapes. In a business where “time is money” the contraction of time results in new profit opportunities by removing the temporal barriers of physical media storage. This has also been reflected in the job descriptions of people working in this field.
These people are now “Preditors” and not just producers, cinematographers, editors, and directors. All those positions have collapsed into a single — widely skilled — person. Today it would be foolish to take courses in becoming a television director. Only multi-camera live events require a Director. Today the entire spectrum of skills, from set design, to post-effects compositing, is required for someone to single-handedly produce content for a digital-demand audience.
Just as Studio Production has declined (and today is stacked with programmable robot cameras) directly from the development of portable equipment so has editing nearly vanished as a distinct job description. The kinds of content which can be most economically created by a one-man-show are now seen on YouTube and are shown on network TV as “reality shows” where the mobility and multiplicity of smaller cameras can harvest the content from poorly contrived scenarios or conflict.
At the far corner of the Tetrad of Media Effects for these new delivery methods is the enhancement of current content and production of higher quality, audience-specific, direct appeal content for a discerning and wallet conscious consumer. I blame the boxed set of HBO’s “Rome” for introducing me to the concept of binge viewing. I may have been watching other shows through my disk rental outlet, but it wasn’t until the content was as compelling and (dare I say) riveting to produce a compulsive reaction in me (and my spouse) to want to continue the experience far longer than the serialized story had been meant to be watched.
Today demand for some specialized programs in serialized format is so strong they fuel debates about the wisdom of those operating in a linear distribution model to keep the content from being consumed all-at-once until long after it has generated subscription revenue from their specialty-channel exposure.
I expect to see more investment made into new “long form” storytelling projects than is made in “feature length” movie making. The feature length is no longer limited to “movie length”. Once you lift the content out of the multiplex environment into the home you will have given people a personal relationship with the stories they can share with friends and family. Right now the idea of “going to a movie” has been contaminated both by the deceptive promotions and the distractions (both real and projected) the cost-benefit has tipped far away from the satisfaction portion on the gauge. As anti-community as home theatre systems might be, they now provide the kind of quality and personal experience people have wished to see changed. Digital projection has pushed back the date for Armageddon in the movie business and the 3D distraction will work for a while yet, but I feel there will be a break from the “native” movie experience from this new generation who are the “never watch” generation. A person’s galvanic skin response will never be a factor again in determining the final edit of a movie or ending.
Netflix has allowed people to “survey” a landscape of titles and watch as far into the story as they like without having to commit to seeing the whole movie. In a single evening I have witnessed a young couple “checking out” as many as five titles in a number of genre and only actually watching one of them to the end. This is similar to the people who no longer listen to an entire song on their iPod. The fidgety compulsive response of having instantaneous access to all of your music is strong enough to annoy your friends and keep you from having the full experience of the studio recording, which a band spent months getting just right.
For anyone who would argue these things are all just commoditized products they would be missing the bigger issue of “process”. The experience is a process and not a product. Binge viewing is a unique experience of serialized storytelling previously unavailable to anyone (outside of a distributor / manufacturer).
I can confess to succumbing to the lure of binge viewing and I am not ashamed of it. It continues to present challenges with respect to conversations I might be having with friends or colleagues who are not yet where I am (or, conversely, who are well ahead of me) but I believe the protocols of dialogue on, or around, the subject of long-form stories will be established in the same ways we can share opinions about books.)
By removing the temporal element from the availability of content we have fundamentally changed the viewing experience and — thereby — changed the method of storytelling itself. I might even hazard to suggest the reclaiming of tales told by ‘minstrels’ in a pre-literate era. That particular Tetrad corner may turn out to be true. If Jenna Marbles is any indication, the ‘minstrels of the future’ may be very entertaining indeed.
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** Live sporting events are still something I am interested in enough to “make an appointment for” but my PVR comes to my rescue if something else gets a higher priority that evening.
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Image Credit: Illustration by David Dees (used without permission)
http://www.deesillustration.com/
LInk to Jenna Marbles showing “How Girls Pack a Suitcase”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3qiXZRFmRY
