Competition between television series networks is heating up, especially with heavy hitters like HBO and Netflix upping the ante with commercial-less shows that arguably have some of the best writing in decades as well as newcomers AMC and the CW pushing the network television envelope with multiple popular shows. As other networks look to compete the newly popular “mid-season finale” has popped up recently for popular shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead and the CW’s Arrow, Netflix has announced that they will take it one step further and have a “mid-episode finale.”
The announcement comes along with a planned 200 original shows to be released in 2015 from Netflix, all seemingly with mid-episode finales. According to the press release, the intent of the mid-episode finales is to keep the viewers engaged and combat the negative effects of a new phenomenon called “binge watching.” According to the CDC, “binge watching” is where one or multiple people sit in one place for minutes and hours at a time watching television programming for an extended period. Some of the negative effects of this new fad includes: a coma-like state, drooling, sore buttocks, and inability to separate reality from whatever show they just watched.
Netflix is trying to stay on top of a very competitive television market and make sure people are aware enough to keep consuming their product and hope their viewers are so emotionally wrecked from so many ups and downs in content that they won’t have any more bandwidth to watch other networks’ television shows.
When contacted by MOARGeek for additional commentary, CEO Reed Hastings Reed Hastings responded immediately saying:
We’re looking to bring the best shows with the best contact in the best format for our viewers. If other crappy networks want to do mid-season finale’s, then f*** it, we’re going to skip the next step and just take it all the way to its logical conclusion. The viewers want more suspense, more drama, we literally want them to be peeing their pants while they’re watching our shows. That’s how we know we’re doing our job, that’s what quality television is all about, and that’s how they’ll keep giving us money to create more stuff, exactly like that.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
