The boom of internet distributed television has made television more conveniently accessible than ever, and also in turn has given viewers more control and freedom as to what media they consume. Prior to this, in the network era viewers had less options due to the limitations of channel based viewing (as they were unable to control the stream of media to their own specifications), and this drastic shift has also allowed for new modes of consuming television content (Lotz, 2017).  

Streaming platforms such as Netflix or Amazon enable viewers to mass consume content due to their structure of releasing media. They have a tendency to release many episodes of a television show at once, allowing the viewer to consume all of the episodes at once if they so wished to. The structure of the episodes also often enable this, with a lot of them ending in cliffhangers, leaving the audience craving for more content. This phenomenon of binge viewing has been debated since, and whether or not this complete media freedom is too overwhelming.

Netflix’s “Long Tail” model has also allowed for them to corner niche audience markets, and this can be seen with the rise of queer television, such as the Netflix Original “Queer Eye”. By showcasing interactions between the queer cast and a variety of individuals, as well as adding in elements of “makeover” television, Netflix is able to corner both queer and straight audiences with the use of popular television tropes mixed with the queer nature of the show (Lotz, 2017). To expand on this, Netflix’s popularity was largely kickstarted due to Orange is the New Black, once again illustrating the effectiveness of conquering niche audience markets by building several moderately successful shows that cater to these audiences, as opposed to having one largely successful one hit wonder piece of media.

Citations:

Barrette, P. (2018) ‘Amanda D. Lotz (2017), Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television’, Communication [Preprint], (vol. 35/2). doi:10.4000/communication.8980.