I've been binge-watching television since I was a little kid. The difference between then and now is that now I get to watch stuff I actually like.
Binge-watching television 10 years ago meant that when the show you wanted to watch was over, you had to watch whatever else was on, which was, without fail, “The Price Is Right.” By the end of a binge-watch, you felt like expired tomato sauce.
Now, on the other hand, you can watch five hours straight of the best shit you've ever seen, with no commercials. So, naturally, everyone loves it. And “binge-watching” went from something people scolded you about, to something everyone and their “Criminal Minds”-obsessed mother gets into.
Basically, it's the difference between a high schooler getting drunk by pouring vodka into an OJ carton in the park with a friend and an adult sitting at a bar, ordering a thousand delicious beers at your birthday party.
Today, Netflix has released an infographic showing (with some not so casual self-promotion of their original shows) exactly which type of shows we like to binge-watch most aggressively.
Netflix usually keeps its views data very close to the chest, which I admire actually. That way, people judge a show on whether or not they like it, not if it's just doing well among others.
Anyway, they broke that rule this time around. Check out their wheel of binge-ability:
Netflix examined the all their Netflix Originals that viewers had actually finished watching and crunched the numbers.
They discovered that shows with, as they put it, "high-energy narratives" were the most binge-watchable. The shows that people took their time on were the more "thought-provoking shows." Basically, you binge a hamburger show and savor a filet mignon.
Weirdly, according to Netflix, episode length had no impact on the speed with which a viewer would finish a show. "BoJack Horseman" (which is incidentally the Netflix CEO's and my favorite Netflix original) was the show that people took the most time to finish — and its episodes are a half hour, compared to "The Fall," which is double that per episode and was watched the quickest.
The average time a viewer completed watching one of these shows was six days — because we are all garbage people with no sex lives.
Happy bingeing.
Citations: Business Insider
