Netflix’s successful show ‘Stranger Things’ released its fourth season this summer, and in known Netflix style they released many episodes at once, but this time they held back the two last episodes for a month. They released seven out of nine episodes, and the end of the seventh episode ended with a cliffhanger, to keep the audience on their toes for the time between the two releases.
Netflix is in some ways known for releasing an entire season and promoting ‘binge viewing’ (Mareike Jenner, 2018). Another function Netflix has is giving the viewer rather short time to decide whether to keep watching before the next episode starts playing, keeping the flow of linear television but in a new and digital sphere.
When Netflix released seven out of nine episodes of Stranger Things season 4, it is safe to say that it was very ‘binge-able’. But when the seventh episode ended, with a massive cliffhanger, and the two last episodes were a month away from release, it may have made the show an even bigger success.
First of all, it made people start talking about it on social media. A lot of conspiracy theories and other discussions were spread across all types of platforms, spreading the word about the show, and drawing more people to watch it. But also made the audience more engaged and created a type of anticipation that would make people go back and watch the whole show over again to look for clues about what would happen next.
With this, Netflix created a new way of distributing content; a hybrid between the classic Netflix’s binge watch model (Mareike Jenner, 2018, p. 109) and a more linear TV model. With this, they created a longer and more consistent audience engagement. But also, since Stranger Things is a Netflix Original, meaning it is exclusively on Netflix, so they also gained more subscribers from the show, (Dominic Rushe, 2022).
sources:
- Mareike Jenner (2018) Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television, Springer International Publishing AG. Accessed: 08.11.2022. Available: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/goldsmiths/reader.action?docID=5475331
- Dominic Rushe (2022), ‘Netflix reverses subscriber decline with help from Stranger Things and Dahmer’ The Guardian. Accessed: 08.11.2022. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/18/netflix-subscribers-stranger-things-dahmer
02.11.22
synne rage
Digital Audiovisual Media Class Blog 
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