You watch your way through a new TV show, and you get to the point when you decide that it’s awesome and you plough through the episodes without coming up for air.
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The research used Netflix viewer data, compiled between January and July of this year, from subscribers in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and US.
For viewers, the benefits of having the entire season of a TV show dumped onto a streaming service like Netflix for binge consumption are obvious: Who doesn’t want to sink back into their sofa and watch episode after episode of their favorite show, emerging hours later-bleary-eyed, borderline catatonic-when work or family calls? In the company’s research of more than 20 shows across 16 markets, no one was ever hooked on a pilot.
The CCO said that the reality provided them with confidence that was giving its members all episodes, which aligned fans and developed the fans base.
In its analysis of global streaming data, Netflix tried to identify the first-season episode when 70% of viewers decided to complete a program’s entire season.
Episode synopsis: An inmate named “Crazy Eyes” has her sights set on Piper and makes her intentions apparent. And Netflix predicts that it might be the striking moment (spoiler alert) when Krazy 8’s disintegrating body falls through the ceiling, along with the bathtub, that got viewers hooked.
What does being hooked really mean?
“It’s been conventional wisdom that the pilot is the most important 30 minutes in the life of a show and it turns out it’s rarely the thing that hooks people”, said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in an interview.
This is a pretty interesting revelation by Netflix that supports the serialisation of entertainment.
House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black and Sense8 are just some of the original dramas available on the streaming service. And that’s where Netflix’s strategy of dropping all episodes of a single season simultaneously comes into the picture.
“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Episode 4, “Kimmy Goes to the Doctor!”
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Across the 20 shows analyzed, Netflix says the results were relatively consistent around the world, though there were a few slight geographic differences. The Dutch grab onto a series most quickly, generally an episode ahead of other countries. For Breaking Bad, for example, it only takes until Episode 2 to get addicted, while How I Met Your Mother takes eight episodes. I do remember this as a particularly good episode, as it’s the one where Frank Underwood returns to his old stomping grounds because a hometown rival is trying to wreck his career via a seemingly baseless lawsuit. Binge-watching is the technical term. The report suggested that Australians and New Zealand wanted a little more convincing time to commit one or two episodes than the rest of the world. This was actually consistent across all shows. That’s what defined a “hooked episode”.
