Before Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus launched in November 2019, it was expected by some media-tech analysts and video industry pundits that the strategy of stacking entire seasons of shows, pioneered by the company that started the business, Netflix, would be the dominant release paradigm of TV's streaming future. 

At the time, it was the way each of the Big Three SVOD services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, released all of their original series. 

Analysts including LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield urged media companies to think less like TV network schedulers of decades past and more like the Silicon Valley giants who were (still are?) taking over their business. 

"Every one of them wants users to spend as much time as possible in their ecosystem. Each tech platform keeps expanding the number of things for users to do on their platform," Greenfield blogged last year, adding that media companies were not "optimizing' properly for consumer digital "addiction" by still adhering to a weekly schedule. 

Meanwhile, the pioneer of the whole binge-enabling strategy has insisted all along that back to back to back viewing is simply a more natural way to watch television. 

“Like reading a whole book in one night, it’s a normal experience to do that," Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings said on a panel back in 2014, noting that the strategy could revolutionize the TV business. 

But as the wheelchair-bound Big Lebowski might say, "Your revolution is over, Hastings!"

None of the six subscription streaming services that launched after November 1, 2019 -- Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, Peacock, HBO Max, Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus -- ended up adopting stacked, all-at-once releasing. In fact, with each of these services enduring their nascent stages amid hindered pandemic production environments, the production volume needed to sustain the strategy might not have even been feasible.  

Hulu, which had begun to fall in line with Netflix and Hulu, releasing comedy originals including the Emmy-nominated Ramy several years ago in a stacked format, has moved to a hybrid model. For instance, limited biography series Pam and Tommy debuted its first three episodes on Feb. 2, but the remaining five installments began unfurling weekly starting Wednesday (Feb. 9). 

Amazon, meanwhile, looks to be pulling back from binge-enabling. In December, it began trickling out the six Season 6 episodes of sci-fi series The Expanse one per week. And this summer, Amazon Prime Video will adopt Hulu's hybrid model for Season 3 of The Boys, debuting the first three episodes on June 3 before posting each of the subsequent five installments weekly. 

If there was a general video industry buzz about the binging trend cooling a little, paywalled insider news scoop site The Information ramped it up earlier this week with a report suggesting that even Netflix is rethinking the all-at-once strategy ... if only just a bit. According to the site, scrapping the strategy altogether isn't being considered, but Netflix is looking for a more efficient way to deploy its $17.5 billion content budget. 

Notably, Netflix last month, hired Andy Kubitz, the executive who used to head scheduling and strategy for the ABC Television Network. 

“To expect a new series a week is a very expensive habit to fill,” HBO Max Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys told The Information. ■

Hulu issued some revealing data this week that shines some light on how the OTT service has become a hub for binge-viewing, defined, in this case, as watching three to five episodes in succession.

Hulu said that 44% of its viewers binge at least once a week, and that the average viewer is watching ten different shows at one time, typically a mix of Hulu originals, comedies, dramas and reality shows.

Among other stats, Hulu said 29% of subs binge watch more often today than they did last year. Shows that are new to the viewer drives most binge-viewing on Hulu, followed by original series and “old favorites.” 

Hulu also drilled down on some binge-trends for specific shows and series.

Within the past year, more than 11,000 Hulu subs watched all 15 seasons (or 335 episodes) of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and nearly 130,000 watched all 180 episodes of The Golden Girls in an average of two months. And some 35,000 viewers binged out on the full ten season of Futurama in an average of 18 days, equating to about eight episodes per day.

Hulu also noted that nearly 30,000 viewers binged on all 192 episodes of Full House via the service in one month.

Those findings represent a snapshot of binge-viewing trends on Hulu, which has about 20 million subscribers, a total that includes SVOD-only subscribers and subs take Hulu's new Live TV service, which also includes the SVOD component.

The Thanksgiving holiday typically marks a respite from the launch of new scripted shows, providing an opportunity for viewers to catch up on all the series that premiered during this year's fall TV season.

Video streaming servies Hulu and Netlfix are bucking the trend, premiering new, high-profile series during a period where football games, movie marathons and holiday fare dominate the television schedule.

Yesterday (Nov. 22) Hulu stepped into the Marvel Comics universe for the first time with the launch of Marvel’s Runaways, which centers on six diverse teenagers who come together to battle a dark and powerful foe – their own evil, supernatural-driven parents.

Today, (Nov, 23) Netflix resurrects the western genre with the debut of the Steven Soderbergh-produced series Godless. The seven-episode series follows a former outlaw on the run from a ruthless gang who finds refuge in a quiet mining town populated only by women.

On Thursday after Thanksgiving dinner, viewers can binge view Netflix’s series reboot of Spike Lee’s 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It. The 10-episode show takes the story of young, independently-minded and strong-willed artist Nola Darling and modernizes it for a new generation of viewers.  

With more than 450 scripted series offered this year, not even the Thanksgiving holiday is exempt from serving up a healthy dish of new, scripted content.  

Syfy is getting into the binge-viewing game, scheduling all 10 episodes of the third season of time-travel drama 12 Monkeys to air over the weekend of May 19.

The thinking: it’s a “binge-able” show that could benefit from a viewing stunt that could serve current fans, draw in new ones and maybe generate interest on the ad-sales side.

That’s what Chris McCumber, president of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, said of the plans, which include airing the first four episodes of the new 12 Monkeys season on Friday, May 19, with limited commercials. Syfy will then air three episodes each on both Saturday and Sunday night.

McCumber said he’s not concerned about the short scheduling format hurting ratings for the series. “We believe this is a big event for Syfy,” he said. “For us to go out there and say you can get all of 12 Monkeys in one weekend is a great thing for our ad sales team go out there and sell.”

Syfy also will drop the 10 episodes on the Syfy app the day after each one airs on the network. McCumber said demand from the show’s fans for new episodes convinced the network to offer the unusual binge viewing-ready rollout of the series at the same time it announced there would be a fourth and final season, so that fans knew there was more of the story coming next year.

“12 Monkeys has such a dedicated fan base, and it’s one of the most binge-able shows out there,” he said. “We decided to give a gift to the fans and bring it out in a way that says, ‘Here’s all of them, all at once.’ ”

Syfy — which last week announced coming new originals, including Krypton, a 2018 offering highlighting Superman’s backstory; Happy!, starring Christopher Meloni as a corrupt ex-cop; and Nightflyers, in development from a novel about spacecraft travelers by Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin — is the latest network to adopt a version of OTT service Netflix’s scheduling strategy of offering all episodes of a series at once to encourage binge viewing.

Over the past year premium services Starz (The Girlfriend Experience, Flesh and Bone) and Showtime (Dice) have tried the gambit. More recently, basic-cable service Freeform (Beyond, Famous In Love) has offered its younger-skewing viewers full seasons of original series through linear video-on-demand and digital outlets.

McCumber said Syfy wasn’t planning to give the binge treatment to any other original series, nor has it decided whether or not to offer the fourth and final season of 12 Monkeys — set to air in 2018 — in a similar manner.

“It has to be organic to the show,” he said. “With 12 Monkeys, we saw a rabid fan base, so we said, let’s give a gift to them. In this day and age, the way the marketplace keeps shifting, you have to keep trying new stuff, and we thought this would be the right show to do it on.”

Freeform viewers will be able to binge-watch the first season of the network’s new sci-fi series Beyond when it launches Jan. 2, Freeform officials said Friday during its New York Comic Con session.

The series, which follows a young man who wakes up from a coma after 12 years and discovers new abilities that propel him into the middle of a dangerous conspiracy, will launch all 10 of its episodes on the Freeform app as well as via Freeform.com, On Demand and Hulu, according to network officials.

“The premiere of Beyond marks an important milestone in the history of Freeform, nearly a year since our rebrand,” said Tom Ascheim, president of Freeform in a statement. “One of the promises we made to our audience at the time was to create content they love and to make that content easily accessible. Beyond helps us live up to both promises. In the same way we modernized our brand, we are modernizing how we bring our shows to our audience. Beyond is our first, and definitely not our last, ‘binge-from-the-start’ show.”

Most industry observers concede that binge-viewing is a phenomenon that’s becoming more the norm than a trend, even as studies say it’s a physically and emotionally bad habit for most people.

A recent University of Toledo study found that 35% of more than 400 participants who consider themselves binge-watchers — those who watched two hours or more TV without any break on an average day the past week — reported higher levels of anxiety and depression than non-bingers.

“ ‘Binge-watching’ is a growing public health concern that needs to be addressed,” researchers said. That correlates with a similar study from the University of Texas that found the more 18-to-29 year-old study participants binge-watched TV shows, the more they became lonely and depressed.

If both surveys are correct, then a majority of Americans are chronically depressed and lonely people, according to a study by research firm Deloitte. The company’s Digital Democracy Survey revealed that 70% of U.S. consumers now binge an average of five episodes at a time, and 31% binge on a weekly basis.

“The survey data indicates that consumers are more willing than ever to invest in services to watch whenever, wherever, and on whatever device they choose,” said Gerald Belson, vice chairman and U.S. Media and Entertainment Sector leader for Deloitte Consulting.

Some cable networks, recognizing the binge-watching habit of viewers, are going all in and releasing episodes of new original series for viewers to watch at their leisure. Showtime last week jumped on the binge-viewing bandwagon and on April 10 will release all six episodes of its new comedy series Dice on its Showtime OTT service, its Showtime Anytime TV Everywhere service and via Showtime On Demand.

Also on April 10, Starz will release all 13 episodes of its limited drama series The Girlfriend Experiencevia its Starz Play and Starz On Demand services.

Of course, Netflix continues to fill its lineup with bingeready original series. It still doesn’t release viewership numbers for its titles, but its unmistakable value to viewers is due in large part to its willingness to provide quality content for subscribers to view whenever and however they want.

Photo: In a sketch on IFC's Portlandia, characters played by Fred Armisen (l.) and Carrie Brownstein fall into a binge-watching haze.

Showtime will allow its digital viewers to binge-watch the full season of its comedy Dice, the network said.

The network will offer all six episodes of the comedy series beginning April 10 on its Showtime OTT streaming service as well as its Showtime Anytime and Showtime On Demand services, said network officials.

The series, which stars comedian Andrew “Dice” Clay, will premier on the linear Showtime channel April 10. Showtime’s move follows pay TV competitor Starz’s experimentation with releasing all episodes at one time for such shows as Flesh and Bone and the upcoming The Girlfriend Experience.

 “We’re excited to release Dice in its entirety across our streaming, on demand and authenticated viewing platforms,” said Gary Levine, President of Programming, Showtime Networks Inc. in a statement.  “With its six episode run, we feel this comedy is ideally suited to being consumed all at once. We’re always looking for new ways to make our programming stand-out, and we’re confident that a ‘Dice binge’ will appeal to both fans and skeptics alike, and help spread the word about his very funny new Showtime series.”

We already knew that Netflix dominates the downstream of fixed U.S. ISP networks, but new data from GfK offers a different angle on how the OTT-SVOD service is impacting consumer viewing behavior.

GfK’s study found that “regular” (monthly) Netflix users in the U.S. watch 10 TV shows per week through the service, as well as four movies during the same timeframe. For TV content, that’s a doubling of the number of shows per week those Netflix users were watching when GfK conducted a similar study last year.

“Projected to the full population, this means that the average US consumer ages 13 to 54 watches roughly 5 TV shows and 2 movies per week via Netflix using one or more platforms,” the company said of the study, titles: Over the Top TV 2015: A Complete Video Landscape.

Among other findings, GfK said Netflix viewing on mobile devices has also more than doubled in three years, with 24% of regular Netflix users saying they viewed the service on one or more mobile platforms in the past month, up from 10% three years ago.

Monthly viewing on TVs, meanwhile, has also risen -- from 36% to 47% among the same group, while watching on PCs (laptop or desktop) has jumped from 17% to 25%.

Roughly one-quarter of those regular Netflix users say they binge-view, meaning they watching three or more programs in one sitting, “often” or “all the time.”

“Netflix is a TV ecosystem unto itself, and now an established force in the total TV marketplace,” David Tice, GfK’s SVP of media entertainment, said of the findings. “But it represents just one aspect of an increasingly complex OTT picture, which also includes subscription services like Amazon Prime and Hulu, delivery systems such as Roku and Apple TV, and threatened incumbents like cable and satellite companies, which are trying to leverage their content with TV Everywhere options. “

While OTT is clearly going mainstream, it’s also a source of confusion for some consumers. The study also found that three of four people saying they had HBO Now, HBO’s new standalone OTT subscription offering, actually had HBO Go, the programmer’s authenticated TVE service. 

This week’s Hispanic Summit will focus on the shifting priorities within the expanding business of Hispanic television. One of those priority shifts should be toward Hispanic viewing of over-the-top services, according to several recent reports.

While Hispanics continue to watch traditional television in big numbers, averaging 112 hours a month watching live and DVR time-shifted TV in the second quarter — behind only African-Americans — those numbers were down by five hours from the same period in 2014, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience report.

What is increasing is Hispanics’ use of OTT services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Among Hispanic TV viewers, 30% of their weekly viewing is of content from OTT services , nearly double the 18% just two years ago, according to Horowitz Research’s recent “Focus Latino” report.

Moreover, nearly half of Hispanic Internet users with a multichannel subscription feel that viewing TV content over the Internet is as easy as watching a multichannel service, Horowitz said.

Also, Hispanics tend to binge-view while accessing OTT services, a Thinknow Research study said. That study reported that 40% of Hispanic OTT viewers prefer to watch three or more episodes of their favorite shows back-to-back compared to just 29% of non-Hispanic viewers.

That’s despite the relatively sparse amount of content targeted to Hispanic viewers on OTT services — and in particular Spanish-language programming — compared with the numerous Hispanic-targeted English and Spanish-language cable networks available on MVPD lineups.

There has been some efforts to reach Hispanics in the digital space: Hulu has been very aggressive in developing original Hispanic-themed projects such as scripted drama series East Los High (pictured).

DirecTV’s Yaveo OTT service has also looked to serve Hispanic consumers seeking Spanish-language programming without the need for a cable-TV subscription.

Still, Hispanic increases in OTT viewing haven’t correlated with a significant increase in cable cord cutting. Horowitz reported that 89% of Hispanics with access to OTT SVOD services also have a multichannel service, providing opportunities for all content providers to reach a very influential and growing customer base.

The wise owl in the classic 1970 "How Many Licks?" TV commercial declared it took three to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. At least that's how many it took before he bit into it.

Netflix wanted to know how many episodes of a TV show it takes before viewers bite into the whole season, and found that in most cases it takes at least three.

The OTT service analyzed global streaming data for the inaugural seasons of more than 20 shows -- Netflix originals and licensed fare -- across 16 markets between January and July and detected a pattern: an episode emerged from each show after which 70% of viewers went on to complete the entire first season.

Netflix calls that the "hooked" episode.

"It turns out that when commercial breaks and appointment viewing are stripped away and consumers can watch an entire season as they choose, you can see fandom emerge," the company said.

Among the cable and OTT shows sampled in the study, viewers were generally hooked by episode 4:

2 Episodes In
--Bates Motel
--Breaking Bad

3 Episodes In
--House of Cards
--Orange Is the New Black

4 Episodes In
--Better Call Saul
--Grace and Frankie
--Pretty Little Liars
--Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

For newly christened Best Drama Emmy winner Mad Men, it took six episodes for viewers to get hooked.

Click here for the full-sized graphic pictured.

"Given the precious nature of primetime slots on traditional TV, a series pilot is arguably the most important point in the life of the show," Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, said. "However, we found that no one was ever hooked on the pilot. This gives us confidence that giving our members all episodes at once is more aligned with how fans are made."

International Variations
The "hooked" episode remained fairly consistent across worldwide markets, Netflix said, but some slight geographic differences emerged:
--The Dutch tend to get hooked the fastest, one episode ahead of most countries.
--Brazilians fell for Jimmy McGill in Better Call Saul one episode sooner than Mexicans.
--Australians and New Zealanders hold out longer than viewers in other countries, generally getting hooked one to two episodes after everyone else.

As for the original question, the Tootsie Pop commercial ultimately concluded "the world may never know" how many licks it takes to get to the chocolatey center, but three groups of student researchers have tried, with less consistency in the results than Netflix's study.

To release or to not release full seasons of scripted show for binge viewing was a question several cable network and OTT service executives wrestled with recently, coming to differing opinions.

OTT service Netflix, which accelerated the phenomenon of launching a full season of a series’ episodes at one time with the debut of Emmy-nominated shows House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, is fully committed to continuing to allow viewers to binge its shows.

Competitor Amazon is also binge-releasing its original series, albeit reluctantly, according to the company’s director, Roy Price. He told AdWeek that he worries about losing the “pleasurable anticipation” of the next episode when you offer everything all at once, but concedess that viewers are used to getting all episodes of Transparent and other Amazon shows when they debut on Amazon Prime.

And viewers love to binge. More than 30% of viewers surveyed in a recent Tivo Spring 2015 Binge Viewing Survey said they deliberately put off watching an entire season of a show until they can watch the whole season at once, a slight increase from the 2014 survey.

In addition, 39% said some shows are better watched back-to-back, according to the survey.

Yet OTT service Hulu still believes in building viewership for a series on a week-to-week basis and will not consider releasing entire seasons of its original shows. Hulu content chief Craig Erwich said during the recent Television Critics Association tour that the service wants to preserve the “water cooler” experience that comes with watching shows on the traditional weekly TV schedule.

Even cable networks are getting in on the act. Starz recently said it will test the binge-viewing phenomena this fall when it launches all new episodes from the final season of drama series Da Vinci’s Demons and the first season of dance-themed series Flesh & Bone on its Starz Play TV Everywhere service prior to each show’s debut on the Starz pay TV service.

Turner Broadcasting is taking a slightly different tack. It will release the first four episodes of TNT's new drama Public Morals the day after the series premieres on the network Aug. 25.

For the foreseeable future, content distribution companies will continue to go back and forth over the binge-releasing strategy as they continue testing the best ways to engage viewers in an ever-evolving home entertainment marketplace.

Aiming to help viewers catch up on TV series on VOD while also juicing up ratings for the new TV season, Comcast said its third-annual “Xfinity Watchathon Week” will run April 6-12, and offer access to 215 shows across more than 40 premium, cable and broadcast channels.

Comcast is running the promo across its platforms, including set-top VOD, at Xfinity.com/TV and its Xfinity TV Go app, with content available in “virtually all cases…regardless of which video subscription tier the customer is subscribed to.”

In addition to giving viewers a chance to binge on shows such as American Crime, CSI: Cyber, Dig, Empire, Finding Carter, The Affair, Black Sails, and Game of Thrones, this year’s version will also feature content for Latino customers with access to shows from HBO Latino, UniMás, and Telemundo. Other programmers that will participate in Comcast’s upcoming Watchathon include Cinemax, Encore, HBO, Showtime, Starz, A&E, AMC, BBC America, Bravo, Comedy Central, Discovery, DIY Network, E!, El Rey Network, Esquire Network, FX, FXX, History, Lifetime, MTV, National Geographic Channel,  OWN, Oxygen, Pivot, Pop, Spike, Syfy, TBS, TNT, TruTV, TV Land, VH1 and USA Network; and broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX, Galavisión, NBC, NBC Universo, and PBS.

Comcast is also backing the spring VOD-fest with a sweepstakes that will offer registrants the chance to win a $20,000 grand prize, show-themed vacations (including a GoT-themes trip to Northern Ireland, and an Outlander-themed getaway  to Scotland), and daily giveaway of a “Binge Box” containing a mini tablet, headphones, snacks, and other items. Comcast will also push the week-long viewing event on social networks, including Facebook, on Twitter (using the #Watchathon hashtag) via its @Xfinity and @Comcast handles.

Last year’s Comcast Watchathon Week, which featured more than 5,000 episodes from 48 TV channels and north of 130 TV series, broke several VOD records for the MSO, generating 61 million views and 50 million hours of TV bingeing. The tilt also helped to drive live ratings for shows such as GoT, which got a 17% boost in Comcast homes versus non-Comcast homes in the U.S.

“Xfinity On Demand has become the go-to destination for catching up and staying current on all of the programming available today. Watchathon enables us to take that to the next level by unlocking the biggest and best TV content of the year for the ultimate TV binge week,” Comcast Cable VP of programming Andy Hunter said in a statement. 

Dish Network said it has completed the deployment of a software upgrade for its top-shelf Hopper HD-DVR that adds several features, including one that shares some similarities with Time Warner Cable’s Start Over service.

That Hopper's new restart feature lets customers watch select shows already in progress from the beginning, so long as it's a program that's in Dish’s VOD library. The update automatically identifies if a live TV program is offered via VOD and alerts customers with an on-screen graphic.

Another update focuses on the binge-viewing craze. When customers are done watching a TV show on the DVR or via VOD, Hopper will present a pop-up offering direct access with up to four subsequent episodes in the series that are available. Comcast, by the way, is letting X1 customers test out a similar feature that encourages binge-viewing.

The final Hopper feature that’s part of the upgrade is one-button access to the closed captioning feature. Customers can toggle back and forth using the green button on the Dish remote, rather than having to  drill through the box’s settings.