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This one kind of lost me on it's comparison to Breaking Bad. I could be an outlier here, but I've rewatched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Walking Dead
by natecavanaugh 9y ago
This one kind of lost me on it's comparison to Breaking Bad. I could be an outlier here, but I've rewatched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Walking Dead at least 4 times, probably more.
The reason I don't think I'm too much of an outlier, in that AMC always runs a marathon to both attract new viewers and reconnect existing viewers, and if it weren't successful, I doubt they'd keep doing it.
The article makes some good points about variability and using the story line format to get people hooked, but it's examples and connections seem really tenuous to the overall point.
- ghaff 9y agoGiven that all the production costs are sunk at this point, the incremental cost of offering as part of a streaming catalog or filling up some AMC broadcast slots as part of an "event" is pretty low. Pre-streaming, I'm sure a lot more people bought DVD sets of favorite series than actually rewatched them from beginning to end. The same principle applies today I'm sure even in the cases where the content is effectively free. I'm not sure this example really counts as a fad though. While successive groups rediscover older TV shows (not that the ones you list are very old at all) viewership is rarely going to be more than of a fraction than it was originally. Perhaps there are marginal exceptions for shows that never really had an audience but develop a bit of a cult following over time. ADDED: The other issue I have with the author's broader theory is that much of what he says is just as applicable to episodic TV shows like Seinfeld as it is to serialized shows.