DOMO June 2013 pdf - Ringier

inge viewing
1
Glued to the tube
Why wait a whole week for the next episode of your
favorite series? That was yesterday. Binge viewing is
the new big thing. Netflix makes it possible, delighting
TV-series addicts while changing the medium itself.
Text: Peter Hossli. Photos: Starstock/ Photoshot, Handout
February 1, 2013, was a day of redemption
for us series addicts:
For the first time ever, an entire season
of a US TV series became available
at once. Thirteen episodes of
«House of Cards» were posted online
by Netflix. For thirteen consecutive
hours we were able to watch lead actor
Kevin Spacey ruthlessly pulling
strings in Washington D.C.’s world of
politics, making Machiavelli look like
an amateur.
More importantly, «House of Cards»
allowed its audience to indulge in
binge viewing.
The expression «binge viewing» is
derived from binge drinking, but
instead of drinking themselves into
oblivion binge viewers watch one or
even two seasons of the same series
over a single weekend, almost without
taking a break, until they’re exhausted.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung quite
rightly pointed out that with «House
of Cards» TV series stopped being
what they used to be. «House of
Cards» has turned them into an even
more addictive drug.
Traditional television series follow
the principle of letting some time pass
between two episodes, which permits
the audience to forget one thing or the
other; the directors of «House of
Cards», however, deliberately tell
their story for binge viewers. Episode
Two starts exactly where Episode One
left off. The narrative threads are so
complex and gripping that you have
to stay tuned constantly.
As with any addictive substance
there are economic reasons behind
this concept. The American DVD and
streaming company Netflix wants
customers to commit to its service.
Users pay a monthly fee that allows
them to watch as many series and
films as they like. Subscriber figures
1
Series: House
of Cards
On the air since:
February 2013
Channel: Netflix
Cast : Kevin
Spacey (photo),
Robin Wright, Kate
Mara, Corey Stoll
Episodes: Season
1 (13 episodes),
season 2 is in
production
Genre: Political
drama
2
Series: Homeland
On the air since:
October 2011
Channel: Showtime
Cast: Claire Danes
and Damian Lewis
(photo), Mandy
Patinkin, Morena
Baccarin
Episodes: 24
episodes in 2 seasons,
season 3 to
start in the US in
September 2013
Genre: Crime/
drama
2
skyrocketed when «House of Cards»
was released online.
This strategy is Netflix’s attempt to
set itself off from cable networks like
HBO or Showtime. The latter have
enjoyed a huge increase in subscribers
that have come to prefer the small
screen to the big movie theater over
the years thanks to first-rate TV series
produced by filmmakers; TV allows
them to develop a story not only
over the course of multiple episodes
but over several years.
Critics have come to praise American
TV series as works of art. Whether it’s
«Homeland», «Mad Men», «The West
Wing» or «The Wire» - when it comes
to cultural influence, these series
have left cinema behind. «The Big C»
takes a comedy approach to the story
of a mother suffering from cancer.
«The Newsroom» takes the news
business to task. «Six Feet Under» is
an accurate as well as emotional
portrait of a family of undertakers;
«Sex and the City» tells of the trials
and tribulations of four self-confident
women living in New York.
It all began with a family of New Jersey
mobsters. «The Sopranos» established
the genre of the high-end TV
series. «We owe everything to the
success of The Sopranos,» said «Mad
Men» author Matthew Weiner in an
interview with the German news
magazine Spiegel. For the first time
ever HBO had been willing to spend
a lot of money on each episode. Episodes
grew longer, and directors
dared to do what had so far only
seemed possible in movies. «The Sopranos»,
according to Weiner, offered
«complex characters, a continuous
3
3
Series: Six Feet
Under
On the air: June
2001 to August
2005
Channel: HBO
Cast: Richard
Jenkins (photo,
from left), Frances
Conroy, Lauren
Ambrose, Peter
Krause, Michael
C. Hall
Episodes:
63 episodes in
5 seasons
Genre: Dramedy
4
Series: The
Sopranos
On the air:
January 1999 to
June 2007
Channel: HBO
Cast: Michael
Imperioli (photo,
from left), Edie
Falco, James
Gandolfini,
Lorraine Bracco
Episodes:
86 episodes in
6 seasons
Genre: Drama
narrative, no censorship, no stars,
and scenes in which nobody was talking.»
The result: «Suddenly, people
who had largely stopped watching TV
were going back to watching TV.»
Television – infamous for being
dumb and lazy people’s preferred
means of killing time – has become
the pastime of the elite thanks to
these series. Or, as the German
weekly Die Zeit puts it: «Watching
series nowadays is a bit like only
watching soccer when the Champions
League is on.» HBO deliberately
advertises itself with the slogan: «It’s
Not TV. It’s HBO.» There are no commercial
breaks. Anything goes: nudity
and sex, bad language, realistic
violence.
The total running time of all episodes
of «The Sopranos» put together
amounts to roughly 80 hours. Not
one minute is boring, because good
series make a point of breaking the
ironclad rules of commercial television.
Soap operas have to allow the
viewer to tune in and follow the story
at any given point; protagonists are
not allowed to evolve, stories go
round in circles. With «Friends» you
can tune in six times a year. In «The
Sopranos» a popular character may
well die, and storylines take surprising
turns. «This changes viewer behavior,»
says «Mad Men» creator
Weiner. «People don’t tune in six
times a year but for every episode.»
Mind you, binge viewers never even
tune out.
4
10 | DOMO – June 2013 DOMO – June 2013 | 11