Netflix Says Binge Viewing is No ‘House of Cards’; Half the users it studied watch an entire season in one week.

Netflix Says Binge Viewing is No ‘House of Cards’

Half the users it studied watch an entire season in one week.

JOHN JURGENSEN

Dec. 12, 2013 8:26 p.m. ET

Netflix NFLX -0.91% is trying to better understand your binge-viewing habits. The company Friday will reveal a snapshot of a phenomenon that is reshaping TV culture—viewers devouring shows in lengthy chunks, episode after episode. Executives say they found a strikingly consistent pattern in the pace at which people binge: In general, about half the viewers studied finished a season (up to 22 episodes) within one week

“Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix in a statement.

The data adds to evidence that binge viewing is becoming a social norm. It also shows that no matter what kind of shows are available, viewing patterns are remarkably similar. Netflix wants to send the message that the stream-and-binge model it helped create is here to stay, eroding the stereotype of stupefied couch potatoes.

Providing details not included in Friday’s announcement, the company said it looked at the viewing patterns of subscribers who watched 10 “currently popular” shows available on Netflix, both broadcast and cable series. It declined to specify which ones, saying it could affect negotiations with studios and other producers who license programs to Netflix. The company did allow that at least one of its own original series, such as “House of Cards” or “Orange Is the New Black,” was included in the study. The size of the viewer pool ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the series.

Netflix only examined users who finished a season within the space of a month. For one serialized drama, 25% of the viewers finished the entire 13-episode season in two days, while it took 48% of them one week to do so. The pace was pretty much the same for a very different kind of show—a sitcom with a 22-episode season: 16% of viewers finished the season in the equivalent of a weekend, while 47% completed it within one week.

That pattern—especially the apparent sweet spot of polishing off one season in a week—was similar across various styles of shows in the sample, including those with audiences that skew male or female, younger or older.

Another finding: The majority of viewers only immersed themselves in one show at a time, rather than juggle several at once.

More TV mavens are announcing their binge sessions—proudly, sheepishly, dazedly—in conversation and on social media. Cultural anthropologist and author Grant McCracken, whom the company retained to supplement its data with interviews with avid TV viewers, says guilt about TV consumption continues to linger 52 years after FCC chairman Newton Minow declared television “a vast wasteland.” Mr. McCracken’s interview subjects only opened up “after it became clear to them that I wasn’t requiring them to apologize for binge viewing,” he says.

Though “binge-watch” was a runner-up to “selfie” for Oxford Dictionaries’ 2013 word of the year, the term had long irked Netflix’s leadership, due to connotations of gluttonous or antisocial behavior. But now even Netflix has surrendered to the term.

“We’ve never been able to come up with a better euphemism,” says spokesman Jonathan Friedland.

Typically, Netflix’s data analysis is aimed at making the service more user-friendly, and ultimately, keeping subscribers in the fold. This new glimpse of binge behavior could contribute to that effort, or help shape marketing messages and decisions about ordering more original series, says Mr. Friedland. “We’re just now getting to the stage where we can come up with some basic truths about how people behave when they have control over how and when they watch stuff.”

Netflix launched its streaming service six years ago, but 2013 was the year binge viewing went mainstream. The term was bandied about widely when the company rolled out all 13 episodes of “House of Cards” simultaneously last February (season two premieres Feb. 14). Competition is growing from companies like Hulu and Amazon, both with their own original series and large catalogs of on-demand video. According to a Nielsen survey released in September, 88% and 70% of Netflix and Hulu Plus users, respectively, reported streaming three or more episodes of the same TV show in a single day.

In any case, the stigma is fading. According to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Netflix to supplement its bingeing study, 73% of TV streamers said they had positive feelings about binge viewing. Earlier this week, HBO beckoned students to its streaming video platform with a tweet: “After you survive #FinalsWeek, treat yourself to a week of @HBOGO binge watching. You deserve it.”