The show must go on...right this instant!

The way we watch television has changed forever.

No longer do audiences sit down at the same time every week to watch a show.

The classic paradigm of television viewership of the last fifty years is gone, and what’s replaced it is the time-draining and mind-numbing, yet immensely gratifying, strategy of TV binging.

In my mind, this shift is associated with our generation’s obsession with instant
gratification.

We spend an absurd portion of our day staring at our phones. We have the internet in our pockets whenever we want it, we have laptops in class, and growing up with email and text messaging has made most communication essentially instantaneous for the
majority of our lives.

We cannot handle being bored for more than a few seconds. When we want something, we want it now.

So if it’s possible to watch two seasons of a television series in a weekend, we will do it.

While only 62 percent of adults responded that they binge watch TV, that number jumps to 78 percent in the 18-29 age group. Personally, I can’t name a single friend who doesn’t occasionally lose an entire weekend getting lost in a new show.

I’ll admit to some embarrassingly long periods of time spent sinking into my couch compulsively pressing the “next episode” button on Netflix. But what I’ve also learned is that TV binging, while quite enjoyable and even more addictive, is not the best way to watch TV. I have found that the TV series I have enjoyed the most are the ones I watched routinely, week by week, as they aired.

The difference is enormous.

When you are forced to wait a week or more to see what happens next, your appreciation of each episode skyrockets. And when you spend multiple years watching characters develop, thrive and suffer, you create an attachment that is much stronger than one built in a weekend of caffeine-fueled power-watching.

Sure, the gaps between seasons are tough to deal with. But they’re supposed to be. Consider how today’s TV habits have destroyed the efficacy of the season finale
cliffhanger.

Watching a bomb blast or Mexican standoff (or any other preferred vehicle of suspense) in May and finding out the resolution in September is infinitely more dramatic than finding it out after ordering pizza and taking a bathroom break.
Whatever the reasons for TV binging, it appears to be here to stay.

Businesses like Netflix have noticed the new obsession and doubled down on it. New content, like “House of Cards” and the new season of “Arrested Development,” is being released entire seasons at a time.

Maybe I’ll just watch one episode every week to fully appreciate them.
But I’ll probably order pizza, take a bathroom break, and watch them all.

­— sreddiga@indiana.edu