Although it dropped the fourth season of The Expanse all at once, Amazon will be releasing new episodes of the show week by week. And it’s a great idea.
When Netflix started making its own shows, it released them in a way that a lot of people weren’t sure would work: all at once. You didn’t wait a week for new episodes of Orange Is The New Black or House of Cards: every episode that each new season was available in full at the same time, all there for your binging pleasure.
With Netflix leading the way, this just seemed to be standard practice for streamers. But as competitors have arisen, things look murkier. Disney+ releases new episodes of its original shows at a rate of one a week, like a show on a normal network. HBO Max, too, has been releasing stuff week by week, with programming president Casey Bloys going to bat for this old-fashioned model:
"I am a huge, huge proponent of week-to-week viewing. It’s funny—when Netflix came out, I think the whole industry said, ‘Oh my gosh, should we be doing this?’ But I’ve come out very firmly on the side of a weekly release pattern. … You have an entire industry of people writing about TV and criticizing TV and obsessing about TV. To feed that once a week and to have people comment on it, and hate on it and love it is a lot. … You want people talking about your shows. You want people debating your shows. You want people having an opinion of your shows."
And then there’s Amazon Prime Video, which has straddled the fence. It’s dropped some stuff all at once, but it’s also experimented with the week-by-week model. The latest season of The Boys came out that way, and it ended up being a big hit for the streaming service. Now, TV Line reports that Amazon will release the first three episodes of The Expanse — its politically charged sci-fi drama — on Wednesday, December 16, with the rest of the episodes coming out one a week.
Personally, I think this is a great call, and wish Amazon had started doing it sooner. Bloys is right: a big part of the fun of watching TV is talking about it between episodes, whether online or in real life. If you drop all the episodes at once, there can’t be any week-long conversation about a cliffhanger because everybody’s already gone on and watched the next episode. There’s no space to wonder about this character meant when they said this, or whether this character might come back. Releasing episodes one by one on a schedule means that excitement can build. That’s good for networks because it keeps interest high, and it’s good for audiences because it creates discussion.
Granted, the convenience of the Netflix model has its appeal, but ultimately I prefer the drip feed. I love getting hyped about an upcoming episode, and talking about it with other fans while we wait. It’s also good for exposure. Netflix releases a lot of shows, but a ton of them don’t make much of an impact because they’re never part of the conversation long enough to gain any momentum. But if shows release episodes once a week or so, there’s time for them to find an audience before everyone moves on to the next thing.
Perhaps a hybrid model is the best way to go, like Amazon is doing with The Expanse season 5: release a few episodes all at once and release the rest week by week. Or maybe some shows could be dropped all at once while others are staggered. At any rate, I’m definitely glad dropping new seasons all together isn’t the only option around anymore.
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