Weekly waits, or all at once? The release schedule debate

The rise in the use of streaming services over the last couple of decades has created a TV culture that allows us to binge an entire show in a weekend – or a day, if you’re ambitious. However, many streaming platforms have recently started to return to the days of releasing episodes on a weekly basis, giving shows a better chance to infiltrate public discourse.

This new trend of weekly episodes allows for a more social watching experience, and it eliminates the fear of spoilers for those with limited time to watch TV. This is a clear downfall of series that are binge-released; it becomes nearly impossible to avoid spoilers, especially for those who are chronically online, once your algorithm realises that you have started watching a show. This often ruins the viewing experience for people, sometimes discouraging them from continuing to watch the series.

Weekly episodes have resulted in an increase in watch parties. These include groups of friends meeting to watch the show together, often with themed food or decorations that relate to the series. However, it also stretches beyond these at-home gatherings, with major cities like London and New York hosting watch parties in central areas, such as the various watch parties for the final episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Weekly episodes also bring strong financial benefits

The increase in these watch parties has no doubt been influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the desire for more frequent human connection skyrocketing. Sharing the TV experience in this way provides the perfect opportunity to bring people together in an accessible and relatively casual way.

However, from the perspective of the streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime themselves, weekly episodes also bring strong financial benefits. For people with temporary or trial memberships, this is a useful strategy to encourage people to keep their subscriptions for a month or so longer. Regardless, once some of the subscription-based services started releasing episodes weekly, it seems that the others felt they had to fall in line and mimic the strategy in order to stay on the right side of this larger evolution of TV consumption.

This weekly release of episodes echoes the typically longer and older series, especially dramas and sitcoms such as Friends and Cheers, which followed the same schedule. In fact, weekly episodes were the standard until companies like Netflix came along. Part of the appeal of such streaming services was the ability to binge-watch shows, since, in our increasingly fast-paced society, on-demand programmes may seem more convenient and suited to our schedules. This makes this return to weekly episodes by streaming giants seem somewhat ironic.

The wait builds suspense and makes people talk about the programmes more

For some, waiting for episodes may seem long and unnecessarily drawn out. However, the wait builds suspense and makes people talk about the programmes more. For example, TikTok took to dissecting episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty and Maxton Hall over the summer, creating theories about plot twists or the deeper meanings that were potentially hidden behind small interactions. With more time between episodes, people are likelier to turn to talking to friends or online discussions, meaning shows stay relevant and trending for longer – another financial advantage for the streaming services. This increase in viewership is also helping to combat the frustrating trend of shows getting cancelled after a season, with the boost in engagement that this provides making it more likely that they get renewed.

Alongside being a great promotional tool for shows, generating higher levels of anticipation, engagement, and public discourse after each episode, the shared watching experience that it encourages is a clear advantage of weekly episodes. So, I’m sure that releasing episodes on a weekly basis will continue as a trend for a while. After all, there is always a choice, in this era of streaming giants and constantly available shows, depending on whether you prefer to have all episodes at your disposal, or to wait for their staggered release.