Episode 1: What is Binge Watching?
Binge watching as a term was first used in the late 1990s by circles of the television fandom. While the online streaming services that we use now did not exist, the idea of watching multiple episodes of something in a row did. In 1997, Netflix began renting movies to people through their mail order rental service, while their website launched in 1998 and their first subscription based movie rental service began in 1999. I first binge watched Glee via this service, renting DVD after DVD of the show from Netflix, waiting impatiently for each new one once I'd finished the previous episodes. In 2007, Netflix launched streaming services, allowing its customers to stream movies and shows online through a computer. Throughout the next few years, they continued to add platforms that could be used for streaming, such as gaming system, smart TVs, etc. In 2013, Netflix released their first batch of original shows, uploaded a season at a time and made to be watched in quick succession as opposed to an episode a week, the traditional television model. This was also the year that the term binge watching gained wide popularity, earning its way onto the short list for Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. Television stations began joining the bandwagon in 2015 and 2016, releasing full seasons of their shows online to be watched all at once instead of following the traditional model.
But what exactly is binge watching? It is defined as watching multiple episodes of a television show in a row, but how is that different than watching TV? Where is the line between watching TV and actually binge watching? Different sources have different answers. According to a survey done by Netflix, 73% of people define binge watching as somewhere between 2-6 episodes of a show in one sitting. Nolan Feeney of The Atlantic, however, crowdsourced and found that at least 4 episodes must be watched for a TV session to be considered binge watching.
I did not find either of these results conclusive enough, so I did my own survey. I focused on college students, first because it was convenient (convenience sampling anyone?) but also because, while many people binge watch, millennials seem to be the target generation for the majority of binge watching, so I consider that generation to have the official say on binge watching. Furthermore, millennials are the ones who have normalized binge watching. For many millennials, binge watching is the norm, or the default way that they watch TV. It is no longer binge watching to them, it is just watching.
To calculate what they considered binge watching, I left the question open ended, allowing for them to answer in either episodes or hours based on how they felt, then averaged the results, which ended up being pretty similar across both fields. The average number of episodes came to about 3.77 while the average number of hours came to about 3.63. Based on this conclusion, I have decided to define binge watching as 3-4 episodes or hours of a standard television show (whichever comes first), or the equivalent amount of any other visual media.
With this open-ended survey, however, I also got some other interesting answers that I thought were worth noting. For example, one person defined binge watching as watching more than 10% of a television show’s season without taking a break. Others said watching a whole season in one sitting or one weekend. To these people, binge watching is not so much about how many episodes, but focuses on the show more as a whole. I also got some more abstract responses. Most of these responses did not include numbers, but instead focused on a feeling or state of being.
“When it has been so long that you are ashamed to admit how long you were binge watching”
“I usually define it not by how many I watch but by whether or not watching the next one feels compulsive - if I didn't want to click the next episode but did it anyways and hate myself a little now I call it binge watching. Without the shame component it just feels like watching a lot of a show.”
“Probably 4-5+ hours, and especially when you should be doing something else (like how I'm supposed to be finishing a paper right now)”
While I plan to stick with the 3-4 episodes or hours of a show, I felt that these feelings were important to share, as they speak to the larger definition of binge watching. This is why I had to ask what binge watching was, why I did not just inherently know the answer. While I am quantifying binge watching for the purposes of the rest of my project, it does come with a larger feeling of compulsivity and sometimes shame and/or procrastination. These larger feelings are important because they are part of the larger definition of binge watching, and because they will become significant later in this project.