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I absolutely love the existing Netflix model of releasing an entire season’s worth of episodes at once so the diehard fans can binge-watch everything overnight and people like myself can wait until the weekend to get in a few episodes after the hype has been built up.
I also think they’ve benefitted A LOT from fans being able to binge-watch shows all at once because it spreads hype via word of mouth quicker than a week-by-week episode model. Someone who just finished watching an ENTIRE season of great TV is a lot more likely to discuss it than someone who just watched one episode of a show and isn’t sure how the season will shake out.
Alas, reports are filtering in that Netflix will begin releasing episodes weekly for certain TV shows, including a bunch of their originals, instead of releasing everything all at once. The first show that will be released on a weekly basis instead of their traditional bulk release is Collection 7 of The Great British Baking Show which is unfortunate because that’s some of the best hangover binge-watching there is.
According to Comicbook.com, you will see future episodes of The Great British Baking Show Collection 7 on the show’s landing page but the future episodes won’t be accessible all at once, and one new episode will be unlocked each week. I just checked my Netflix guide and under ‘continue watching’ it says ‘NEW EPISODE’ in white letters on a red background and next to that it says ‘WEEKLY’. So this feature has already made its way to my living room.
Scrolling down the Netflix guide I also see ‘WEEKLY’ under Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act. Netflix will also be doing this with Rhythm & Flow, a rap competition show featuring Cardi B and Chance the Rapper as judges alongside T.I.
Hulu has pulled off this model with their original programming. They make you wait for new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, but if my memory is correct, they’ll typically release more than one episode to start the season then move to a weekly model. Netflix should consider this because lately I’ve been waiting until a season is complete, even on TV like Showtime’s Billions, before watching so I can just binge-watch the entire season all at once and I know I’m not alone in this.
According to an article on Hypebeast, this move from Netflix appears to be getting in line with what Disney+ will be doing with their original shows like Loki and The Mandalorian. The idea is to build conversations around the shows each week like HBO had with Game of Thrones and to prevent spoilers from people who don’t have time to binge-watch these shows overnight.
For more on this move from Netflix, you can click here to read the report on ComicBook.