TiVo: ‘Binge Viewing Is a New Norm’

SAN JOSE: TiVo has released its annual Binge Viewing Survey, which finds that 92 percent of respondents reported watching more than three episodes of a show in a day and that original streamed series top the list for the first time.

Netflix's House of Cards and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt rank as the most recently binged shows. Of those surveyed, 66 percent of season bingers use Netflix to watch their favorite programming in bulk. Season bingers are defined as viewers watching an entire season, or more, of a specific program within a few weeks.

As for why viewers binge, respondents cite the desire to “catch up” on TV (28 percent) and “only having learned about the show after many episodes had already aired” (17 percent). Three in ten of those surveyed prefer to wait to binge-watch certain programs until the entire season or series is over. In fact, 32 percent deliberately put off watching an entire season of a show until they can watch the whole season at once. Also, 39 percent say that some shows are better when watched back-to-back.

TiVo's chief research officer, Jonathan Steuer, commented: “Binging is booming—not just during sparse stretches in the TV schedule over the summer or holidays, but year-round—and as programmers such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon continue to release original programming a full season at a time, we expect this trend to accelerate. TiVo’s new OnePass feature is ideally suited to maximize binge-viewing efficiency—including full-season binging—across linear TV, VOD and OTT sources of content.”