How Much Binge-Watching Goes On?
Barrie Gunter · 2024
This chapter examines research evidence concerning how much “binge watching” takes place. Much of the relevant evidence derives from audience/market research audits of consumption of different types of TV services, both linear and non-linear in their configuration. This evidence has indicated that non-linear TV services have gradually captured larger audiences in terms of their overall size and their share of the available market. Then, there are measures of volume of TV/video use based on specific measures of binge-watching. Many of these measures have focused on the consumption of TV streaming services and the extent to which they have cannibalised audiences for traditional linear TV services. What has become clear is that non-linear, on-demand TV viewing has grown and with it, so too, has the binge-watching of streamed TV series/serials that are released a season at a time. Hence, much “binge-watching” is focused on the consumption of specific TV series/serials. There are age differences here with younger people being more enthusiastic adopters of non-linear video viewing. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its extensive government restrictions on normal public behaviour, created further opportunities for binge-watching to become established. Trends over time, for example in the United Kingdom, have shown that viewing of traditional broadcast TV progressively declined across the second decade of the 21st century, while non-linear video viewing of all kinds increased, but most especially that devoted to TV streaming services. People generally have a limited overall amount of time available for TV/video viewing but now have a more complex array of decisions to make in determining how to budget this time across increased viewing-choice options.