The Catch-Up Effect

Say you've just discovered the intricacies of the meth dealing - science teaching, Walter White in Breaking Bad or the chain smoking, whiskey charm of Don Draper in Mad Men,  you've stumbled across either in a channel flick and the second season is halfway through on your television.

In the days of old you would trundle down to the DVD store and pick up any of the available copies of the previous season...that's if you even made it off the couch, let alone out the front door, before your attention came hurtling back to the latest offering from Harold Bishop and Ramsay St. 

HURRAH! No more! Over the past few years the web savvy and legally 'unconscious' generations have turned to torrenting and online streaming to catch up to shows that would have previously passed them by. The era of the once-off 8pm sit down for the latest installment of Underbelly has been swept away by the knowledge that we can now watch our favorite shows on our time. 

So what is a network to do? 

They rely on guarantees to advertisers that a certain audience share will be met, and thus justify the cost of air time for their product. You would think that with power moving increasingly to the consumer to decide what to watch and when to watch it, such guarantees could become a thing of the past. 

Well it's not all bad news, in fact, services such as Netflix and Hulu which have emerged as the big players in what I would call the beginning of the post-torrent era (with paid low-cost subscription rates), have actually benefited the regular TV ratings of cult shows such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

How? 

The recent Bernstein Report on Netflix has termed the phenomenon, 'the catch-up effect' as viewers see later episodes of shows on TV they 'catch up' to the current episode by legally streaming them one after the other through these paid services, bringing them up to date. Alternatively, avid fans can re-watch episodes right up until the newest season premiere on prime time TV,  this effectively secures an audience for the premiere screenings of shows across the stations and as the Bernstein Report maintains, is a definite ratings win for networks. 

What will be interesting to see is how networks will adapt to such a change in Australia. It's likely they will release previous seasons through legal online streaming services much the same way as they have in the US. 

We might even be lucky enough to catch up on all 27 seasons of Neighbours before the next season premieres next year.