1. From Viewer Behavior to Marketing Practices:
The Effects of On-Demand Video and Social Media
Michael Cheiken
University of Chicago
Department of Cinema and Media Studies
Daniel Morgan
April 22, 2016

2. 1
Over the past few years a noticeable shift has occurred in how television shows
and movies are watched. It is no longer the case that these programs can only be watched
on a large screen in a theater or on a television set. Video-on-demand (VOD) signified a
change from audiences’ viewing TV programming at the broadcasters’ mandated time of
airing to consumption at any time. With VOD anyone can watch a movie or television
whenever they want. To an extent, home video was able to achieve this before streaming.
But once the popularization of streaming expanded, anyone with access to the Internet
and “smart” mobile devices became able to not only access content whenever they want,
but also wherever they want. Now that movies and television can be streamed online,
these two consumption models have molded into one manifesting itself in a “watch
anywhere, watch anytime” model of consumption. The popularization of this attitude
toward viewing has changed the way in which movies and television shows are watched,
and has consequently forced marketing and advertising companies to adapt accordingly.
The online consumption of films and TV has resulted in the collection of much more
precise data on viewership demographics. This data has proven invaluable to marketers
and advertising agencies that have been able to use both the data and online platforms to
plan and execute exciting and innovative marketing campaigns. Online video
consumption has also brought structural changes to the form of television shows as well,
in the form of advertisement-free viewing. This literally changes the way that people
watch content online, but it also results in different behaviors during consumption.
The process of marketing a movie could very easily be broken down into two
separate frames. There is the time period before the release of the movie and that after
the release of the movie. Once the movie has been released, however, consumers weigh

3. 2
the opinions of friends and acquaintances much more heavily in ticket purchasing
decisions than the advertising of the studios. As such, the marketing team has much
more to gain by presenting a stellar pre-release marketing campaign, during which they
can control the majority of the available information about the movie and ultimately help
drive big opening weekends. The first weekend of a movie’s wide release is the most
important period of the film’s theatrical run. Each of the top 20 grossing movies released
in the United States in 2015 earned over 25% of their total gross in the opening weekend.
Of those 20 movies, only The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2 posted declines in gross
from the first to the second weekend of less than 40%.1
While these statistics are from
just this past year, these trends in theatrical turnout and gross have remained consistent
for quite some time. It is no wonder that when marketers are given their assignments for
a movie, it is often their task to generate a large opening.
The popularization of mobile consumption, not only of video content such as
trailers, YouTube videos, and Vines, but also of non-video specific social media have
driven studios to view these platforms as opportunities to garner ticket purchases from
choice demographics. For years, word of mouth has been considered to be a very strong
influencer in potential moviegoers decision-making2
, and studios have recognized the
opportunity that they have with regard to social media marketing campaigns. Social
media is such a powerful tool in this way because the marketing team is often not even
seen as the source of the information. Viewers of online content often are referred to the
material by one or more of their friends or acquaintances, and “92% of consumers believe
1
"2015 DOMESTIC GROSSES." 2015 Yearly Box Office Results.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2015&p=.htm.
2
Liu, Yong. 2006. “Word of Mouth for Movies: Its Dynamics and Impact on Box Office Revenue”.
Journal of Marketing 70 (3). American Marketing Association: 74–89.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30162102.

4. 3
recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.” 3
This provides
a convenient combination of both word of mouth and studio-controlled content, and
constitutes an avenue through which movie and television marketers are increasingly
pumping material.4
In addition to this alteration in viewership practices, the consumption of media
across digital platforms allows for data mining at an extraordinary level – far beyond
what could be done from looking at traditional ratings-based television viewer
demographics or analyzing theatrical attendance numbers. The resultant level of
admittedly one-way intimacy with the consumer allows for much more targeted
advertising and marketing campaigns as well. This type of individualized and highly
specific campaign can be seen in the example of the social media marketing campaign for
Lionsgate in preparation for the release of The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015).5
Among the influencers that TheAmplify, a digital and social media marketing
company, approached to help market the movie were Instagram and television celebrity
Keegan Allen and YouTube phenomenon Joey Graceffa. TheAmplify targeted a clear
demographic with these choices, and the digital medium allowed for them to determine
the target demographic and appropriate influencers with incredible ease. Keegan Allen is
one of the actors on the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars, which consistently ranks
very highly in the Women 18-34 and Females 12-34 demographic. Additionally, the
3
Whitler, Kimberly A. "Why Word Of Mouth Marketing Is The Most Important Social Media." Forbes.
July 17, 2014. Accessed February 07, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2014/07/17/why-
word-of-mouth-marketing-is-the-most-important-social-media/#bab18ea7a77c.
4
While the scope of this paper only addresses word of mouth marketing in regards to its relation to creating
pre-opening buzz and hype, word of mouth marketing has also been employed by years by smaller pictures
and distributors to keep movies and theaters and create successful long theatrical runs. This is most
noticeable in the success of The King Speech, which made between 9 and 15 million dollars every week for
10 straight weeks, an incredibly rare feat of consistency in the box office.
5
Macy, Beverly. "Here's How Influencer Marketing Propels Big Studio Movies." The Huffington Post.
June 22, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-macy/heres-how-influencer-mark_b_7119036.html.

5. 4
show is consistently one of the most social television shows generating tens of millions of
impressions on Twitter each night.6
The strength of Pretty Little Liars in social media
has found its way onto Keegan Allen’s Instagram account and its overwhelmingly female
followers. A similar demographic was targeted by the partnership with Joey Graceffa,
whose main YouTube channel focuses on a female demographic.7
The marketing team
had the influencers engage with Insurgent-related material, such as the Insurgent Break
Reality virtual reality experience, and post about the experience on social media
networks. In terms of sheer exposure, the campaign, though quite simplistic, worked; in
the seven days leading up to the release of The Divergent Series: Insurgent there were
about 700,000 tweets about the movie and 39.5 million views on YouTube of Divergent-
related content.8
While measuring social media activity through influencers and number
of tweets has become more and more popular, it is still unclear what type of actual
financial imprint they leave.
Similar social media marketing campaigns have been able to reach close to a
billion people. The “Apes Will Rise” campaign put together by Mekanism, another
digital and social media marketing company, for Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) did
just that.9
The first step they identified in creating this marketing campaign was
gathering a group of influencers to promote the film on their social media platforms.
Ultimately, they used a combination of data analytics and intuition to identify a core
6
Baron, Steve. "ABC Family's 'Pretty Little Liars' Returns at #1 Among Target Demographics." TV By
The Numbers by Zap2itcom. June 3, 2015. http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/06/03/abc-familys-
pretty-little-liars-returns-at-1-among-target-demographics/.
7
Varrati, Michael. "Player: Joey Graceffa - VideoInk." VideoInk Player Joey Graceffa Comments. June 4,
2014. http://www.thevideoink.com/features/special-issue-tag/player-joey-graceffa/#.VmSJDWQrJO0.
8
Bauckhage, Tobias. "Digital Tracking: 'Insurgent' on Track for Solid Debut." Variety. March 20, 2015.
http://variety.com/2015/digital/box-office/digital-tracking-insurgent-on-track-to-top-divergent-opening-at-
box-office-1201457184/.
9
“Apes Will Rise”, https://mekanism.com/case-studies/case-20th-century-fox-apes-will-rise

6. 5
group of 50 individuals to act as their influencers, naming them “The Rise 50.”
Combined these influencers had 50 million followers. Throughout the campaign these
influencers shared the content produced by Mekanism, which ultimately manifested itself
in the over 28 million views of the YouTube video “Ape with AK-47.” On the day
before the movie’s release, the 50 influencers hosted Q&As through their own Twitter
and Instagram handles about the movie and gave out tickets. As a result, the hashtag
#ApesWillRise trended on a slew of different social media platforms. This wide range of
internet exposure meant that about a third of the viewers on opening weekend had seen
one of the videos created by Mekanism and about two thirds of the spectators heard about
the movie through social media. Overall, the campaign made 987 million impressions10
.
The YouTube videos that Mekanism produced and distributed are an immediate
and concrete example of how the way in which media is popularly consumed has very
drastically changed the way that advertising companies can sell a product. While movie
trailers and clips had been on YouTube for a fairly substantial period of time prior to the
release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this level of marketing is much more in-depth
than that. Trailers would also run on television, as they also did for Rise of the Planet of
the Apes, but this particular campaign existed solely on the Internet, and it was designed
for consumption through YouTube. Each video that Mekanism created with the idea in
mind that it would be consumed through a computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.
10
It is important to note that measuring impressions is a fairly sketchy way of determining the impact of a
social media marketing campaign. Social media impressions are tallied when someone may have seen the
material. The main flaw in this is that the material needs only be loaded on the web page, but not actually
seen to be considered an impression. Notoriously impression conversion rates are rather small. However,
in such a data driven business it seems only natural that companies would desire a way to quantify their
impact.

7. 6
The way in which these marketing campaigns are conducted provides some
semblance of a revelation about current viewing and consumption practices. All of these
platforms are mobile applications, and the usage of these internet-based applications in
order to find desired content has allowed for much more useful demographic and
psychographic studies. The demographics have expanded from “Male. Female. Over 25.
Under 25 … Now we can get down to micro-segments, like soccer moms in Florida that
are really passionate about action films.”11
Netflix, for example, has used specific
demographics and psychographics to classify movie content into 76,897 “micro-genres”
ranging from more obscure yet understandable micro-genres, like African-American
Crime Documentaries12
, to the absolutely unimaginable, like Sentimental Movies about
Horses for ages 11 to 12.13
While it is only in its infancy, many studio executives have
begun trying to use this enormous amount of data to not only market movies post-
production but to make decisions concerning which scripts to buy or what casting
decisions to make.14
Netflix has found that these genre categorizations overlap between television
shows and movies a lot of the time, and in creating user recommendations Netflix does
not hesitate to use a user’s television show and film watching history. The usage of this
movie and television related data in order to help in production of a television show or
movie from the ground level was seen in Netflix’s creation of House of Cards (2013-
11
"Big Data and Hollywood: A Love Story." The Atlantic. March 2, 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/ibm-transformation-of-business/big-data-and-hollywood-a-love-
story/277/.
12
Madrigal, Alexis. "How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood." The Atlantic. January 2, 2014.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-netflix-reverse-engineered-
hollywood/282679/.
13
Kleinman, Alexis. "Top 9 Eerily Specific Netflix Categories." The Huffington Post. March 7, 2015.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/netflix-categories_n_2813921.html.
14
"Big Data and Hollywood: A Love Story."

8. 7
present). Netflix was able to use their access to viewer activity to know that David
Fincher’s movies, most notably The Social Network (2010), had been very widely
streamed on Netflix and watched from beginning to end. Furthermore, the original
British House of Cards and movies featuring Kevin Spacey were all hits amongst the
Netflix-watching community. The chief communications officer of Netflix, Jonathan
Friedland, expanded upon the importance of having access to large amounts of data
stating, “[Big Data] gave us some confidence that [Netflix] could find an audience for a
show like House of Cards.”15
Netflix has continued to use the data generated by its incredibly large user base to
make both television and movie decisions. In 2014, Netflix announced that they had
signed an agreement that would have Adam Sandler “star in and produce four films to be
available exclusively on Netflix worldwide.”16
Their data showed that Adam Sandler
was “among the few actors whose movies consistently rank[ed] among the most-viewed
by subscribers in the U.S. and in its other regions, ranging from Brazil to the U.K.” This
ultimately incentivized them to make an unprecedented deal with Sandler despite the fact
that his most recent film Blended (2014) had flopped both critically and financially,
pulling in a mere $46 million on a $40 million dollar production budget.17
On December
11, 2015 the first of these four movies, The Ridiculous 6, was released for streaming. As
has been the case with recent Adam Sandler movies, The Ridiculous 6 was universally
panned by critics. Nevertheless, Chief Content Officer for Netflix Ted Sarandos said
15
Carr, David. "Giving Viewers What They Want." The New York Times. February 24, 2013. Accessed
February 08, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-
to-guarantee-its-popularity.html.
16
Spangler, Todd. "Netflix Signs Adam Sandler to Exclusive Four-Movie Deal." Variety. October 01,
2014. Accessed March 20, 2016. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/netflix-signs-adam-sandler-to-
exclusive-four-movie-deal-1201319066/.
17
"Blended (2014) - Box Office Mojo." Blended (2014) - Box Office Mojo. Accessed March 20, 2016.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blended.htm.

9. 8
that, “In the first 30 days on Netflix, [The Ridiculous 6 has] been the most-watched
movie in the history of Netflix.”18
That being said, Netflix is in a unique place in the
entertainment industry. This is because they do not actually need to tell anybody how
much their movie cost or how much they paid an actor or how many people have actually
watched a show or movie. Because of this, as well as the often opaque, vague statistics
that Netflix provides as evidence, many are skeptical about how well Sandler’s movies
and other Netflix productions have actually done.
The innovative marketing strategies have been working wonders for the movie
and television production studios, but it is easy to notice that each of these campaigns
relies fully on a single thing: the presence of large amounts of data from which the
companies can make their decisions. Without the very specific insights gleaned from this
data, Mekanism and TheAmplify may not have been able to identify the optimal or even
functional influencers to market the movies. This is why the new model of mobile
consumption is so instrumental in forming these marketing trends. While some of this
content from which the big data is gleaned is non-studio content, such as the videos Joey
Graceffa makes, much of the data comes from viewers watching movies and/or television
shows online on websites such as Netflix, Hulu, or Crackle. The presence of these VOD
services, and VOD itself, has reduced the need for live watching of television shows. As
a result, some television networks have found a conversion from the live-plus-3
viewership metric to live-plus-7 more appealing.19
Instead of using the number of
viewers on the release day and the next 3 days as the basis for ratings, many companies
18
Child, Ben. "Adam Sandler's The Ridiculous 6 Triumphs on Netflix." The Guardian. January 07, 2016.
Accessed March 20, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/07/netflix-adam-sandler-ridiculous-
six-6-best-viewing-figures-ted-sarandos.
19
Littleton, Cynthia. "Live-plus-7 Builds Muscle as Metric." Variety. November 12, 2012.
http://variety.com/2012/tv/news/live-plus-7-builds-muscle-as-metric-1118062141/.

10. 9
are shifting to using the number of viewers on the day of release and the following week.
The expanded time frame for this ratings model tells a familiar story of the era of any-
time consumption. People do not want to be shoehorned into watching their favorite
television show during its typical release time, and instead value the ability to watch on
their own schedule over the experience of watching a television show during its initial
airing.20
It is important to note that this does not apply for live events, however. Sunday
Night Football has vaulted to the number one spot on prime time television, “averaging
23.1 million viewers during the NFL’s 2015-2016 season,” and professional football
“accounts for 22% of total average viewership of [CBS, NBC, and Fox] this fall.”21
Broadcasting live events has remained as popular as ever because of the experience of
being “in the moment.” Watching a sporting event on replay does not have the same feel.
The same can be said of other live events, such as the Oscars, the Tonys, and NBC’s live
production of classic musical The Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood (what
year?). Looking at the top 10 broadcasts of 2015, nine of them were live events22
. The
only television show to make the list was the 9th
episode of season 2 of The Blacklist,
which received a huge ratings bump partly due to airing directly after the largest live
event of the year and of all time, Super Bowl XLIX. Live events force viewers to watch
them at the time of their first, and sometimes only, airing, and they are becoming a new
point of focus for television networks. Television analyst Deana Myers notes that, “The
20
This attitude about making one’s own schedule can be seen as a part of an overarching trend referred to
as the flex economy. The workforce is becoming more flexible, and while it is evident in the attitudes
around Netflix it is just as visible in how Uber drivers work, for example.
21
Pallotta, Frank. "Here's What Network TV Ratings Would Look like without the NFL." CNNMoney.
November 24, 2015. http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/24/media/nfl-ratings-network-tv-fox-cbs-nbc/.
22
Loudenback, Tanza. "The 10 Biggest Television Events of 2015." Business Insider. December 11, 2015.
Accessed February 08, 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/most-watched-tv-events-of-2015-2015-12.

11. 10
big thing networks are doing is focusing on things that can combat ad-skipping and time
shifting.”23
Many live events do exactly that, and this new emphasis on eventizing live
television owes a debt to the then-innovative “live voting” on Fox’s blockbuster success
American Idol (give years, ??-2016).
In her work “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology,” Jane Feuer
claims that, “Television exploits its assumed ‘live’ ontology as ideology. In the concept
of live television, flow and unity are emphasized, giving a sense of immediacy and
wholeness…especially in ‘live’ coverage of events such as the Olympics.”24
In her
article, Feuer repeatedly uses “flow” to refer to the segmented nature of television. In
covering events such as the Olympics the flow is very apparent. NBC will cut between
events, commentators, and interviews with Bob Costas. With sporting events such as
football, the real event is still segmented through commercial breaks, which exist almost
solely for the sake of television, not to serve the game itself. Soccer has the least amount
of constructed flow of the action, but it is still there in the form of halftime. It is the
“liveness” of these events that draws us to them.
Why is it so essential to watch the live event in real time? Why can’t sporting and
other live events be watched on DVR or tape delay in the same way that we consume
films and other television shows? For a sporting event, even the knowledge that
somebody has already won the game may lessen the spectacle and suspense of live
viewership. Many people find it difficult to maintain the level of tension when watching
23
Kang, Cecilia. "Broadcast Television Goes Back to the Future with Popular Live Telecasts." Washington
Post. December 3, 2014. Accessed February 08, 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-future-of-broadcast-television-is-all-about-live-
events/2014/12/03/10fdab5a-7a5e-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html.
24
Feuer, Jane. “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology” (1983). 16.

12. 11
a sporting event that is recorded, although viewers do this with movies all the time.
Somebody has already seen the movie and knowledge of the ending is very widely
available to the public. Movies are watched in large numbers, but this pre-existing
knowledge seems not to have nearly as extensive an effect. Yet, for sporting events
having knowledge of the outcome is catastrophic and ruins the experience, or at the very
least turns it into a very different, seemingly not as enjoyable, experience. There is of
course a difference in the societal acceptability of spoiling sporting events and spoiling
movies. It is generally frowned upon to ruin the conclusion of movies, but the scores of
sporting events are widely reported immediately upon their ending and this is a common
and acceptable practice.
Even more than just trying to come up with more live events to air, television
networks are trying to promote their pre-recorded broadcasts as events themselves. The
company having what would seem to be the most success at this is HBO with their hit
series Game of Thrones (2011-present). Watching Game of Thrones has become an event
that often takes place with friends, whether physically or over the Internet (as did their
popular series Sex and the City (1998-2004) and PBS’s Downtown Abbey (2010-2015).
The event expands much beyond the actual watching of the show, however. For Game of
Thrones the event is the pandemonium that occurs immediately at each episode’s
conclusion when family and friends, both physical and digital, rush to discuss what it is
they have just watched. While it does not affect advertising for HBO, since their shows
have none, the power of live viewership is evident. If a network can turn their show into
an event rather than just a television show, this creates potential to increase ratings and

13. 12
make advertisement slots on the network more valuable.25
As such, many networks are
trying to promote their shows, not just as shows but also as events that are best
experienced communally.
One of the more popular techniques in making these television shows into events
is having the actors and actresses live-tweet along with the show. In this way, they can
interact with the show’s viewers through a second medium aside from the television. The
executive vice president of communications at CBS confirmed this inspiration for more
live tweeting stating, “The advantage of [live tweeting] is it helps eventize an episode,
and it’s added incentive for fans to watch a show in real time as opposed to DVR.”26
The
goal of creating an event is clear, and it is ever-apparent that engagement beyond just a
single screen is the studios’ path to achieving it.
There are definitive differences between viewing a television show live and
watching the show on your own time via one of the many available VOD services. The
most obvious difference is the time of the watching, but the more important change is the
ability to fast-forward through advertisements (DVR cable services) or not seeing them at
all (on-demand streaming). Ultimately, advertisement-free viewing has a huge effect on
how television shows are consumed. For the television shows that air on the Big Four
networks, and some other networks as well, the programs were filmed and edited with
commercial breaks in mind. It is the approach of many of these shows to lead into
commercial breaks with oft-contrived mini-cliffhangers to persuade the viewer that
changing the channel and potentially missing some of the show is not an option as they
25
For HBO the revenue does not come from advertising slots, but the ratings do affect how much the
company can charge for product placement.
26
Porter, Rick. "The Fall TV Live-Tweet Onslaught Is Coming, and It's Not Going Away." The Hollywood
Reporter. September 21, 2015. Accessed March 06, 2016. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-
feed/fall-tv-live-tweet-onslaught-825758.

14. 13
proceed to air advertisements. While VOD services can remove advertisements, they
cannot change the way that the show was filmed and edited. Precious time accounted for
by the filmmakers is lost, and it changes the way that the show is consumed. The most
important change that takes place in this advertisement-free viewing is the loss of
mandated time for reflection. The cliffhanger that drives the show into commercial break
sparks the viewer’s excitement, and prompts the viewer to think about what has happened
thus far in the show to predict how the cliffhanger will be resolved. The emotional high
can be fully experienced and calmed, or even enhanced due to immense anticipation,
during the commercial break. This opportunity is not available in an advertisement-free
viewing. There is no time for reflection. Of course, when viewing with the
advertisements, the emotional power is sometimes lost because of the waiting. This sets
up a binary between narrative-focused consumption and the immersion-focused
consumption.
Narrative-focused consumption occurs in the traditional consumption model with
commercials. Because the viewer has periodic times of reflection during which to
consider events previously occurring in the episode and using them to predict future
events, the viewer is more in touch with narrative nuance. However, the narrative-
focused viewer struggles to become as emotionally involved because of the presence of
advertisements that relieve tension. The immersion-focused viewing occurs in the VOD
model. The lack of advertisements allows the viewer to remain fully immersed for the
entirety of the show, and thus the viewer may struggle to capture minute details while
overwhelmed by the momentous emotional pace of TV narratives. Entrenched in fast-
paced, eventful narrative, the viewer is more focused on the emotional tides of the show.

15. 14
The absence of advertisements does not ensure that this is the case, however. With DVD
box sets, and more recently online streaming, advertisement-free viewing of television
shows that were originally aired with commercials is increasingly popular. In such
shows, the scenes before and after a commercial break are often drastically different from
each other, and the advertisements serve as the cut and transition between the two scenes.
Without the commercials, the scenes are observed back-to-back. The original airing
method taken into account, means that the two shots are not edited together smoothly in
many cases. This abruptness and lack of editing can lend attention to itself rather easily
and draw the viewer out of the narrative, albeit in a different way than advertisements do.
Take for example the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing (1999-
2006), which is currently available for advertisement-free viewing on Netflix.27
Consider
the sequence from 14:24 to 15:15. Toby Ziegler has just finished explaining to Josh
Lyman in a very heated argument that Josh is going to be attending a coffee meeting with
some speechwriters and other politicians in order to make up for a mistake he made on
national television so that the team can salvage some of the PR. Josh finally agrees and
he begins to walk back to his desk. The camera cuts to a shot of Toby from over Josh’s
left shoulder. Toby hands Josh a clipping from the newspaper and informs him that the
person whose picture is in the clipping started consulting in town. Josh looks up slightly
from the clipping and asks, “Who’s she working for?” He is surprised and caught off
guard, which is apparent from the tone of his voice and the suddenness of his reaction.
Toby says that he doesn’t know but is looking into it, and he exits the room. The camera
cuts as Josh sits down in his chair, still looking at the newspaper clipping. The music has
27
The West Wing. “Pilot.” Episode 1. Directed by Thomas Schlamme. Written by Aaron Sorkin. NBC.
September 22 1999. Retrieved from Netflix.

16. 15
a romantic hint with a touch of cheerfulness provided by the chimes. He stares into the
photo, seemingly reminiscing. “That’s a good picture of her,” he says, and the screen
fades to black. After two and a half seconds the screen fades back in to reveal the Capitol
Building through some trees. Simultaneously, a more percussive song begins, very
loudly occupying the soundscape. The camera tilts down to reveal a silver convertible
passing a black SUV rather recklessly at an intersection. The camera cuts to a shot of the
driver from her left. She yells, “Bruce. Bruce. Bruce! I may have just gotten back into
the business this morning, but I didn’t come by way of a turnip truck, you know what I’m
saying?” Putting the pieces together, the viewer recognizes that she is the person from
the newspaper, since that person also recently “left Lennox-Chase to start consulting in
town.”
The main point of interest in this sequence is the cut that transitions from Josh’s
office to the Capitol Building and Washington Street. As the screen fades out the sound
follows with it, until the blackness has totally consumed the screen. The screen stays
black for about two and a half seconds before cutting directly to an establishing shot of
the top half of the Capitol Building. The sound here blares, and provides a sharp and
sudden change from the silence that accompanied the dark screen immediately before.
The abruptness of this change is alarming to the viewer, who is is drawn out of the
narrative and forced to come to terms with the seemingly abrupt transition. The upbeat
percussion and guitar provides also provide a stark contrast to the slow wind, strings, and
triangle from the scene in Josh’s office. The guitar and drums drastically differ from the
viewer’s expectation, and the viewer recognizes this dissonance. More importantly,
however, the transition is immediately noticed by the viewer, and it is jarring. The

17. 16
viewer is made very aware of the presence of a cut intended for the inclusion of a
commercial break. In this moment, even if it is just a brief moment, the viewer is
withdrawn from the narrative, not to reflect on it, but to focus on something else entirely.
Especially for such a dialogue-driven program that is as fast-paced as The West
Wing, the presence of commercial breaks provides time for the viewer to digest the
previous fifteen or so minutes of action. Watching on a streaming site, the viewer cannot
take the time to try to remember who each of the different characters they just met are or
to think about whether Josh is actually going to get fired by the President. Instead these
two minutes are condensed to a mere two and a half seconds, which is just enough time to
wonder why the screen has been black for so long. This way, when the transition ends,
you are thinking about the blackness, not about the show. Contrarily, when watched on
television with the advertisements, this transition back into the show would typically be
preceded by a short network spot that alerts the viewer that the show is about to come
back on, allowing them to re-focus their attention if necessary. As a result, whereas the
viewer watching on a mobile stream may not be wholly focused on the show, the
television viewer is primed and prepared for the show’s return.
There is another reason, however, why binge-watching promotes this emotionally
focused viewing method. It is a mentally draining activity. It is difficult to focus on the
minute narrative aspects of anything for an extensive period of time, let alone something
as dense with narrative content as a television show. Inevitably the viewer gets tired as
he or she embarks on an extended watching session. It becomes ever more difficult to
engage in close reading of the show as the viewer continues to watch. The spectator
becomes both physically and mentally fatigued. The spectator takes a more passive role.

18. 17
Instead of trying to predict and interpret, the viewer begins to just experience. Instead of
focusing on the narrative arcs and clues, the spectator gets swept away by a sea of
emotion. This is immersion-focused viewing.
The popularization of VOD and mobile watching has designated a shift from
narrative-focused viewing to immersion-focused viewing, and in doing so paved the way
for the binge-watching release model that Netflix uses. Binge-watching provides the
conditions for a heavily exaggerated emotional-focused viewing experience. In this
viewing atmosphere it becomes almost impossible to separate each episode from the next.
Instead, they all seep together. Not only are the commercials gone, but the days between
the airings of episodes are gone as well.
This has obvious repercussions on marketing as well. With a show that is
intended to be binge-watched you only need an opening strategy. The chasing strategy is
obsolete. In a traditional model, the network needs to advertise the premiere of the show,
but it is also important to remind the viewers throughout the week that the next episode is
going to be aired. This is obviously not an issue with binge-watching shows, such as
House of Cards. Netflix does not need a chasing strategy28
to secure viewers to watch
the next episode of the show, and they can make the premiere of the show their sole
focus.
This shift from weekly watching to binge-watching has not only changed the
marketing, but it has also effected production. The popularization of binge-watching has
seen a dramatic shift in show development. For a long time the episodic show, where one
could put on any episode and probably easily understand what was happening, was the
28
The chasing strategy is the marketing strategy focused on getting people who have watched the show to
continue to watch the show, and tune in for the next episode.

19. 18
most popular type of program.29
Now networks are starting to change their focus and
make more serials instead. The change can be at least in part attributed to VOD. The
problem with serials used to be that sometimes you would miss an episode, and there
would be no way to catch back up. VOD ameliorated that concern, and thus the serial is
becoming ever more popular because of its focus on character development and its
intense emotional provocations. Binge-watching thrives on the types of shows that
create such strong emotions and the procedural gets bogged down in the mechanisms of
making each episode fully contained that it has very little time to be emotionally
immersive. Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine watched Breaking Bad in such a
manner, and hailed binge-watching as “probably the purest way to watch a great
series.”30
She noted that she did not have to worry about whether or not the show would
be cancelled, but much more importantly she notices that she “sailed past the waves of
buzz, raves, and backlash, past interviews with Gilligan and Cranston, misleading promo
reels, casting news, and Twitter debates.” She described the lack of this social media
awareness and context as “bliss.” This type of watching marks a significant departure
from the once popular “water cooler chat.” Because viewers were unable to stream
content online whenever they wanted, people would spend the days in between the airing
of episodes talking about the episode they just watched, reflecting on how they felt at the
time and speculating about what future episodes may have in store. This opportunity
provides viewers not only with a chance to share their reactions but also to hear other
people’s reactions and adjust their opinions of the show. Imagine if after the first episode
29
Adgate, Brad. "Serialized TV Is All The Rage This Fall." Forbes. May 16, 2014.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2014/05/16/serialized-tv-is-all-the-rage-this-fall/.
30
Nussbaum, Emily. "My 'Breaking Bad’ Bender." NYMag.com. July 24, 2011. Accessed February 09,
2016. http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/breaking-bad-nussbaum-review-2011-8/.

20. 19
of Season 2 of House of Cards there was a one-week break before the next episode. The
Internet would have lit up with fan theories, reactions, and debates as to how Kevin
Spacey’s character Frank Underwood killed Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara). Such discussions,
though sometimes far-fetched, often contain pieces of narratives or chains of thought that
enhance the viewer’s knowledge of the show and perhaps even his or her understanding
of it. Instead of processing the episode over the course of a few days, Nussbaum and a
steadily increasing number of people are watching episodes back-to-back and sometimes
even full seasons of shows without break. This type of viewing, as highlighted before,
removes the conventional reflection period offered by traditional television-viewing
models, but just as importantly attenuates the opportunity to communicate with peers.
These peers, moreover, go far beyond one’s immediate family and friends. The subreddit
dedicated to Breaking Bad has 212,830 subscribers. Obviously not all of them would
have been actively posting and commenting after each episode. Yet even if only .1% of
them did participate actively, that is still 212 different people with whom to discuss the
show. This type of community atmosphere is obviously important in developing ideas.
When Nussbaum and others binge-watch a show, they are certainly much more “in the
moment,” riding the emotional tides of the show with great psychological investment, but
it could be at the expense of narrative understanding. Regardless of whether or not
binge-watching is actually “the purest way to watch a great series,” it is clear that the
trend promotes an individual consumption model.
The popularization of Netflix has also prompted another change in viewership
that is more mechanical. Netflix is primarily consumed through a smaller device, most
popularly the personal computer or laptop. These modes of consumption are geared

21. 20
toward individualized usage. Whereas television shows were once most commonly
watched in a group gathered around a television at primetime, recently the consumption
of television shows has switched to this more individualized method. This can be a
drastic change in the environment during the viewing. It is not uncommon to see one
watching a television show on his/her computer while other people in the same room are
having a heated conversation and yet another person is partaking in another extraneous
activity. This was almost unheard of before Netflix and portable DVD players, where
people needed to be quiet so that the television show could be enjoyed. Headphones
were not an option before these individualized methods of watching were available.
While headphones may dull out the noise, there will still be some ambience. While the
graphics inhabiting the screen may demand attention, distraction is much more readily
available during mobile consumption.
However, this individualization of the television process is not simply possible. It
is actively promoted. It makes sense that Netflix would promote this mode of
consumption since it is an enormous proportion of their business. However, it is not just
this mobile streaming corporation that is actively campaigning for this method of
watching. Consider the commercial “Watch TV Anywhere”31
aired by Comcast. The
commercial begins with a Comcast XFINITY salesman stating, “Being away from home
doesn’t mean being away from your favorite shows” as the camera follows him into a
sleek, futuristic cube. There they have a few customers standing around a white podium
with tablets on it, while surrounded on the three visible sides by screens that serve as the
walls. As the salesman gives examples of where you could watch television the screens
31
Comcast. (2015). Watch TV Anywhere [Television Commercial]. Retrieved from
http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7a5e/xfinity-tv-go-app-watch-tv-anywhere.

22. 21
surrounding the room change to provide images of these environments. The sleek,
black and white color-schemed environment provides what is currently the technological
aesthetic. While they are physically in this technological dream-world, the images
portrayed on the walls are overwhelmingly natural, a park and a beach. The images
displayed on all of the walls are designed to make the consumer feel as though they are in
those places. It provides a great irony. When using the XFINITY TV Go App the
consumer is physically in a real-life environment while she is mentally occupied with the
television show that he is consuming. This serves two purposes. The technologically
savvy room in which the consumers see and use the tablets prompts the viewer to accept
Comcast and the app as advanced. The portrayal of the environments as immersive
shows that the user can enjoy her favorite television shows while enjoying the beach or
the park. This tries to dispel the notion that this mobile consumption removes people
from the real world as they fail to interact with their surroundings. More interesting,
however, is how the advertisement deals with the groups of people to whom the salesman
is making his pitch. Each different group is identified by an establishing shot showing
the entire room. It further prompts the viewer to cluster these people into a collective.
However, they follow these establishing shots with close-ups of individuals from the
group using the app. The contradiction distinguishes a shift in focus from a group
engagement with material to an individual experience.
This trend is echoed in DIRECTV’s commercial “Hothouse”32
. The
advertisement starts as a fireman bursts through a flaming wall, knocking over a vanity
and mirror. The camera then cuts and pans to a fire raging as a man sits in his bed. The
32
DIRECTV (2011). Hothouse [Television Commercial]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjI4NqaxTfs.

23. 22
fireman trips and falls. As he is falling motion ceases and the sound is cut off. The man
gets up off the bed and walks through the door into the kitchen. He presses a button on
the remote he is holding and a fireman falls through the ceiling onto the kitchen table. He
gets up and grabs a young child who is obviously in need of rescuing. As he picks up the
kid a voiceover begins, “With DirecTV you can start watching in one room, pause, and
continue watching in any other room.” As the voiceover says pause, of course, the man
hits a button on the remote, grabs a bowl of popcorn, and then sits down on a couch in
front of his television to which the fireman and action has been transported. By
portraying the action within the room as opposed to on a television in the room, DirecTV
is emphasizing viewer engagement. It further suggests that this level of engagement is
not lost but is carried over as the viewer changes rooms. While it is not explicitly stated
during the advertisement, the fact that the program is paused means that the viewer time-
shifted the program, recording it for viewing after the live broadcast. This is a huge focus
of the commercial, as it shows that DirecTV believes that the ability to watch and
continue watching shows in different rooms is so marketable that it is worth the cost of
promoting time-shifting, a practice that companies usually try to discourage. The main
focus of this commercial is that a viewer can now pause a television show and then
switch to another device and resume the show. However, the consumption is distinctly
individual. It is not a couple watching their favorite comedy that decides it is time for
bed, and moves from the sofa to the bed to continue watching together. Rather, the
commercial displays a man pausing the show, which he is watching alone, moving from
one room to another. The “point-of-view shot” at the end of the commercial “promotes

24. 23
the perspective that platform mobility encourages personalized viewing”33
. While this
message may be subliminal, it is still sent.
It becomes clear that an individual consumption model is promoted by these
companies and even by the act of streaming itself. As such, mobile streaming websites
and shows have a careful balancing act. Most of them strive to engage their viewers
socially, yet they also want them to consume the media individually. What seems to be a
contradiction here, however, is remedied by social media. Sites like Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram have already reconciled the inherent contradiction of being alone and
being social at the same time, and so the solution to this problem is made even easier. By
forming groups online, people are still able to make watching television alone into a
group activity.
These trends in marketing and the viewership practices aforementioned are not
abating. The individuality of watching promoted by mobile streaming is even more
present in the recent developments of virtual reality, wherein viewer’s put on headsets
that make them blind to the public. The streaming services that promote this type of
individuality are gaining more and more steam, making and acquiring more and more
material every year. Indeed, the individuality of consumption is becoming more
widespread. The growing individuality of watching is becoming a disturbing reality to
movie studios and in particular to screeners such as AMC and Regal. Their entire
business model is based on people paying to watch movies in a large auditorium with
others, and the increasing commonality of watching alone has become worrisome. The
potential downfall of this theatre system has even seen its own manifestation in Screening
33
Tryon, C. "'Make Any Room Your TV Room': Digital Delivery and Media Mobility." Screen 53, no. 3
(2012): 287-300.

25. 24
Room, which would offer people the chance to watch first-run movies in their very own
homes.34
The marketing trends continue to reinforce this shift as well. Movie studios seek
immersion within the narrative of the film far before the film’s release with virtual reality
experiences similar to that described during the discussion of The Divergent Series:
Insurgent. The media through which these advertising materials are released are
individual formats; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others all ask for the user to
make a profile and become an individual on the Internet. These shifting practices are not
merely going to return to their former state. These trends in marketing and in viewership
practices have staying power.
34
Schager, Nick. "Is Sean Parker’s Screening Room the End of Movie Theaters?" The Daily Beast. March
27, 2016. Accessed April 21, 2016. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/27/is-sean-parker-s-
screening-room-the-end-of-movie-theaters.html.

26. 25
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