Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, July 14th, 2022
In defense of bingeing
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, July 14th, 2022.
QUICK PROMOTIONAL NOTE
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Now on to the world of television and the media….
GEN Z WOMEN APPARENTLY ARE OVER NETFLIX....AT LEAST ON MOBILE
Oftentimes I see a story and think that there is something of interest here and it might be implying a trend worth following. But I don't have enough data points to really put it into context.
That's certainly the case with this story in Fast Company, which covers a new study from Global Wireless Solutions about Netflix and its apparent decline in Gen Z female users on its mobile app:
Netflix lost 26% of its Gen Z female users on its mobile app between 2019 and 2022, the largest decline compared to all other age groups, according to a new study conducted by Global Wireless Solutions (GWS).
Collecting data across 200,000 U.S. adult smartphone users, GWS calculates that not only have over a quarter of female subscribers ages 18 to 24 left the streaming platform, but the number of minutes spent on Netflix’s mobile app has decreased among users of all ages. According to the study, even with users who are not canceling subscriptions, minutes spent streaming among women 18 to 34 has decreased by 39% since 2019 and by 33% among men aged 25 to 34.
Wow, that sounds bad. And it certainly is not great news, although it's difficult to judge the impact of this accurately, especially when you pull out these other nuggets:
Netflix is not alone in these recent declines in smartphone viewership. According to the study, since its launch in 2021, Discovery+ has recorded the lowest quarterly minutes of use at 3.2 billion minutes, compared to the third quarter of 2021 when peak viewership reached 4.8 billion minutes.
Despite these trends among Gen Z women, Netflix is still the most popular “premium content” streaming service for mobile app viewers, according to GWS. And yet, not even Netflix comes close to video powerhouse YouTube, which garners nearly 6 million more sessions—shows between 30 minutes and an hour—than Netflix. Those ages 18 to 34 spend 80% more minutes daily on YouTube than streaming services, 71% of whom are likely to be using smartphones.
So it appears to be that there is some sort of slump in usage across multiple streaming services (and I'd love to find out if this slump also took place on other major streaming services). And it also seems to be related to subscribers shifting some percentage of their viewing time to YouTube.
Another data point in this hypothesis is this piece in The Wall Street Journal, which reports viewers 50 and older accounted for the largest increase of streaming hours in May, pulling in 39% of overall streaming on services like Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ that month, according to Nielsen numbers. That percentage is up from the 35% overall viewing number record in May 2020.
All of seems to point to the streaming business beginning to see the first hints of the trend that decimated linear television. Heavy users are increasingly becoming older, as young viewers cut back on their interest in favor of YouTube and social media.
As I said, after reading these two pieces I have many more questions. This seems to be reflection of a shift in platform preference instead of an active turning away from just Netflix. But it's just too hard to know for sure without more data. A phrase I seem to be using a lot lately.
IN DEFENSE OF BINGEING
I spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the concept of bingeing television with people. In some circles, the practice of streamers dropping an entire season of television at once is considered to be very close to a cultural crime. If you want to get a lot of traffic to a post as a journalist, all that is required is to include a headline along the lines of "Hey, Bingeing Sucks."
The main argument against bingeing comes from TV industry folks, TV critics and hardcore television fans. They moan about how bingeing destroys the communal experience of the conversation that surrounds the traditional weekly episode release method. In a lot of ways, this complaint reminds me of the ones that sprung up in the music industry during the evolution from album releases to being able to buy individual tracks from an album.
There certainly was something communal about the experience of hearing an entire album back-to-back in the way that the artist intended. And there are some albums that deserve that level of attention and contemplation. But it's easy to forget the old album/single purchasing method was a terrible experience most of the time for consumers. It was expensive and you often found yourself being forced to buy an entire album to get the two or three tracks you really wanted. And while music fans could rightfully argue "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" deserved to be experienced in its entirety, I'm not sure that the album "Chicago XIV" deserved the same level of appreciation.
And that is my response to people who use the success of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as a rationale why most scripted television should be released on a "one-episode-per-week" basis. Those shows are the exception, not the rule. Releasing episodes once a week doesn't guarantee people who spend more time talking about the show. Otherwise, my social media feeds would have been filled last month with conversations about The Essex Serpent.
The pop culture zeitgeist only has the attention bandwidth to deal with so much programming at one time. And in an industry where there are maybe a dozen potential buzzworthy shows are being released each month, dropping an entire season of most of them at once gives more of them a chance to shine-even if it's for a shorter amount of time.
That brief attention is even more important when it comes to genre programming or other shows that either have a limited upside audience or present some other challenge for audiences. Bingeing allows the shows on the margin to maximize their brief promotional window before they disappear. And there is always the chance that that small but concentrated attention will allow a more challenging title to break out into a wider audience.
Releasing an entire season at once also plays to the reality of streaming television in 2022. We live in a world with a lot of media distractions. We're discovering things at different times and on a variety of unexpected platforms. Our viewing habits are defined by our friends and social media feeds as anything else. For the most part, we don't live in a pop culture world of entertainment. It's a pod culture world. More and more often, we discover a show because someone we know or follow on social media talk about. I am sure nearly all of us have suddenly had a discussion of an older show dominate our cultural pod because one person discovers it and encourages everyone else to give it a try.
Some of the griping about binge-releasing television comes from people who have built parts of their careers around the concept of a weekly release schedule. Journalists who write weekly recaps, publications who crank out tons of breathless coverage of every episode - none of that work fits into a world where entire seasons of TV shows are dropped every week, carpet-bombing viewers with an endless selection of new things to watch.
But binge-releasing television plays to that time-shifted pod culture most of us live in now. Yes, a traditional weekly release works for some high-profile programs with built-in fanbases. But entirely too many industry analysts and reporters confuse "how I watch TV" with the way it should work for most people.
WHY MARKETING MATTERS, PART 278
There is a lot of talk about the challenges of creating a cultural event with a streaming project. While a few titles ranging from The Mandalorian to Squid Game have entered the cultural zeitgeist, the nature of the medium and how people watch streaming content makes it difficult to market streaming TV shows and movies in a way that makes it feel as it's a title that everyone is talking about at the same time.
And often even when a streaming title seems to be doing well, it can feel as if it's still a title that is flying under most people's cultural radar. And one recent example of that challenge is the animated film The Sea Beast, which recently premiered on Netflix.
The Sea Beast is doing rather well by Netflix standards. Not Stranger Things well, but according to the streamer, the film was the #1 English-language original film in the U.S. last week and it was in the Top Ten in 92 countries.
And yet somehow, the film feels almost forgotten, although that doesn't seem to be the case among Netflix subscribers. But given the movie is from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chris Williams (Moana, Big Hero Six, Bolt) and that is so overwhelmingly delightful, the movie should be on the lips of every young kid and their parents.
It's not and while I don't usually link to a long Twitter discussion, this one covers a lot of the perceived issues with how the marketing for the film was framed.
The fact the movie has found a substantial audience already is a testament to the film and not the PR push. The images released ahead of time by Netflix didn't do the film justice and I didn't see much focused press ahead of the launch. Netflix certainly doesn't seem to have the infrastructure in place to promote kids programming similar to what Disney can throw at a project. It feels weird to argue that a reasonably successful streaming film should have done ever better. But I suppose that's what I'm arguing here.
ODDS AND SODS
* Peacock has ordered a second season of Dr. Death, with the series shifting to an anthology format that will focus on a new crime.
* Of course they are releasing Shark Week NFTs.
* Hulu has announced the premiere date for a new competitive baking show called Best In Dough. Hosted by Wells Adams (Bachelor in Paradise) and Chef Daniele Uditi (Pizzana restaurant creator and co-owner), the show brings together pizza obsessed competitors from all walks of life to showcase their pizza slinging skills and battle it out for a cash prize. It premieres Monday, September 19th.
* Hulu has released a new video teaser for the upcoming fifth season of The Handmaid's Tale, which premieres Wednesday, September 14th.
* Car manufacturers are dropping something that's been standard equipment for nearly 100 years: AM radio receivers.
TWEET OF THE DAY
Apparently I have a fan on Twitter...
WHAT'S NEW FOR THURSDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
All The Queen's Men Season Premiere (BET+)
Fboy Island Season Two Premiere (HBO Max)
Good Madam (Shudder)
Hart To Heart (Peacock)
Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight (Netflix)
101 Places To Party Before You Die Series Premiere (TruTV)
Resident Evil Series Premiere (Netflix)
Shark Side Of The Moon (NatGeo)
Sharks That Eat Everything (NatGeo)
That Girl Lay Lay (Nickelodeon)
Top Gear Season Thirty Two Premiere (BBC America)
Victoria's Secret: Angels And Demons (Hulu)
Vote For Juan (HBO Max)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU FRIDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.