This is an online exclusive story.
The Batman TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968 had a unique structure. Each episode was in two parts with a cliffhanger at the end of the first. Broadcasters wanting to show the series had to agree to show the parts on separate nights.
Were the bosses of the taxpayer-funded, government-run, publicly owned NZBC going to allow some Hollywood types to tell them how to run their TV programming? They were not. They would either show the two episodes together or not at all. So not at all it was, and New Zealand fans missed out altogether on the 60s TV classic.
Some 60 years later, the powers that be at the NZBC’s successor TVNZ, are keen to do anything it takes to get eyes on their network. Accordingly, you can now binge-watch shows on the state-owned broadcaster.
Binge-watching as we know it today was born in 2013 with the advent of Netflix and the practice of making new series available for viewing all at once. It is the viewing preference for many.
When Netflix surveyed its audience it found 73% of people have positive feelings when they binge-watch. How many years of study went into producing this shock result – people enjoy something that they choose to do – is not recorded.
Bingeing carries unfortunate connotations of gluttony and lack of self-control. You may prefer the term “marathon viewing”, which has a whiff of healthy activity and, according to Wikipedia, “places more emphasis on stamina and less on self-indulgence,” thus proving it is possible to be holier than thou about absolutely anything.
Bingeing works on basic behavioural psychology, the same thing that makes your dog fetch that ball over and over again, although not necessarily as entertaining. There are studies purporting to show it releases pleasure-giving dopamine.
We love bingeing for many reasons, not least because it gives the illusion of control. It’s not indulgence. It’s really all about time management in our super-efficient lives. We decide not only what we watch but how much – which often turns out to be many hours at a time. But that’s our choice.
Ironically this willingness to devote swathes of our leisure time to a single story on screen has been accompanied by a drop in the willingness of those who read for pleasure to engage with any more than the roughly 75,000 words of the standard novel.
TV presumably has an advantage over print in that it is a passive activity. Reading a book requires you to burn through precious calories by moving your eyes and fingers, whereas with TV the screen does all the moving for you.
That attention spans are getting shorter is well known and TV has often been blamed. But streaming evidence suggests the contrary.
Christchurch academic Eric Trump teaches a humanities paper in which he assigns his students excerpts and short stories rather than full-length classics because they are reluctant to take on the longer works. He agrees that rebranding the experience “binge-reading” might convert them. Paradoxically, in Dickens’ day those novels were serialised and people had to wait a month at a time for the next episode. No binge reading for them.
Binge watchers forgo the pleasure of delayed gratification, when anticipation of a reward intensifies the experience. If you can have Christmas whenever you want it, why would you put it off?
All-purpose blame magnet Covid also gets a look-in. When we weren’t baking freezerfuls of cake and date loaf during lockdown, we filled up a lot of that time binge-watching.
As with any reward-based activity, there’s regret when we get to the end of all 62 episodes of Breaking Bad. What will fill that Walter White-shaped gap in our lives? The mainstream media are here to help with all those pieces titled “20 90s Classics You Can Stream Right Now” or – more optimistically - “10 Great Comedy Series You’ll Want To Binge In One Sitting”, with the last three words included for people still struggling to grasp the concept of bingeing. Australia even has a network called Binge, just to remove all possibility of misunderstanding.
The concept has been adapted to other uses. The US-based iCenter is an information resource that exists so “Every Jewish young person develops a lifelong relationship with Israel” and in its “Binge watch Israel” viewing guide says the country “has plenty of material for great TV: a diverse population, schism and tensions between groups, war, terrorism, and plenty of chutzpah”.
Much closer to home, bingeing can aid domestic harmony. You can pretend to be wonderfully tolerant of your partner’s appalling viewing preference if you know it will play out over a couple of nights rather than drag on for weeks.
Finally, a warning. According to the Northwestern Medicine website, writing about binge-watching: “Research has shown that respiratory function is greatly decreased among healthy young men sitting in a slumped position compared with healthy young men sitting with proper posture.” It’s not confined to healthy young men. Some of us like to slump. We don’t have to be bingeing 24 hours to suddenly neglect our posture. And we will continue to slump if we feel like it and retain that sense of control that we never got to experience watching Batman.
