The business logic behind the drama

TV show was once a highly anticipated social event

Now it has become an ubiquitous environmental factor

Binge-Watching is a product of on-demand streaming media websites and social media. Prior to this, the audience must consume consumption when broadcasting on the TV series, or buy a box DVD to watch many episodes, but this often means waiting for a long time. Now, the TV network is pushing the entire season to platforms such as Netflix.

The online company is developing nicome programs for smaller audiences, and distribution and redes distribution through new platforms, thereby crowded the traditional TV market for development. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and HBO Go have created a new form of viewing and become a catalyst for innovative commercial transactions.

This has changed the nature and structure of TV content. In TV, narrative has always been the product of the content delivery mechanism. Why make suspense? Because you will watch next week. Why are the programs mostly half an hour or an hour? Because real -time viewing requires predictable timetables. Why does the plot have a multi -scene structure? Because you need to leave room for advertising.

Breaking these restrictions, the screenwriters were able to develop a deeper and more complex storyline than before. In the past, the lengthy and complicated storyline belonged to the category of video games, and now we can often see this type of story in TV series. The HBO drama like "Deadwood" abandoned the advertising time and content restrictions of the TV network, just like Dickens' serial novels. It can even be said that watching streaming media episodes is more like reading a book, breaking the "time tyranny" of the TV, and watching the drama completely according to your own time.

But it is also similar to video games, because the drama is immersed and is completely controlled by users. It created a sense of anesthesia that was involved in the show and let it out of you for several hours. Watch the default settings to "Play the next episode", the operation is very simple, and it can even become a game: your friends publish their progress on social media every hour, each episode seems to become a Unlock the level.

The beginning of all this is because Netflix innovatively transmitted movie and TV programs through the Internet in 2007. Netflix began to store in its unlimited shelf space that seemed to have been out of DVD, which attracted the most enthusiastic movie enthusiasts. As it gradually transformed into an Internet company, it was just that it had discovered its competitors to the media company. The company has won the loyalty of users by breaking the convention, and its overall ratings continue to increase, while the number of US -paid TV home users has fallen by 15 % since 2015, and this loss is still accelerating. By 2019, this streaming giant has approximately 167 million users in 190 countries around the world.

In 2013, Netflix launched all the ten episodes of the political thriller "House of Cards" at one time, creating the concept of "carnival watching", which is the concept of brushing. Since then, animation, children's shows, reality shows -all types have become the target of Netflix. A single company's sudden emergence in the global entertainment industry made many Hollywood people sleep hard late at night, let alone theater owners, cable television and satellite television providers and other traditional practitioners.

In the early stage, before Netflix made its own original content, the key things were not what it provided, but the way it provided content. Subscribers do not need to wait for several months to watch the quality of the studio in their own living room. They don't have to sit down to watch the advertisement, or make a week to let each episode of the new show series light up their screen. They can skip the opening of the show, or click the button to enter the next episode. Cable TV and satellite TV providers have never provided the audience with these friction -free functions, making paid TV backward streaming platforms for many years.

In addition, how the audience participated in TV shows and how to interact around TV, it also changed dramatically. During the first decades of development of TV, watching TV was an arranged event, which can attract a group of people in private houses and public places. The show is the driving force for this kind of party, and watching TV is the main activity of those who sit in the living room or face bar TVs. The TV show was once a highly anticipated social event, and now it has become an ubiquitous environmental factors.

With the development of these new mechanisms, a new relationship has been established with the audience. The traditional TV assumes that your time is scarce, and you basically spend a few hours watching TV before going to bed. The assumptions of streaming media services are completely different: they want to have your free time (travel, holiday, weekend) anytime, anywhere. Because of this, streaming TV is not only a new way of viewing, but also a new type of literature (Genre, here to borrow literary criticism, which means that a medium style follows a relatively fixed convention or rule) Essence

(Author coefficient nostalgia)

Send 2022.9.5 Total Issue 1059 "China News Weekly" magazine

Magazine title: The business logic behind the drama

Author: Hu Yong

Edit: Wang Xiaoxia

Operation editor: Xiao Ran

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