Media Outlet (NPR) Upset at the "Full Drop" Method of Streaming TV Shows

because, well, it doesn't get to write about the content as easily

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The full-drop model, the ultimate in modernity and new media, isn't great for the ongoing cultural conversations that have been such an important complement to the development of better TV. While once-a-week viewing might seem like an old-media relic, it turns out to be a new-media advantage if you're talking about new-media conversation and engagement (for instance, Twitter) rather than new-media episode delivery (for instance, iTunes). There's probably been less interesting writing about the craft of a show like Orange Is The New Black, and it's probably been read by fewer people, than would have been the case if writers and viewers had watched and processed one episode at a time, rather than feeling obligated to watch it all at once and then spit something out before people got bored and moved on to the next show.

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The problem is that periods of relevance, which for a week-by-week show last for months, become very short around full-drop shows. If you don't cover a show like House Of Cards in the first week, it seems over. That encourages rushed reactions from both regular viewers and professional ones, and that isn't good for the development of the hyper-analytical voices that grew up around and in support of shows like Mad Men and The Sopranos and elevated both professional television criticism and viewer engagement.

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basically since their industry is suffering because people make their own media choices and, accordingly, ask their own questions of this media, we need to attack the individual so that their industry can gain relevance and establish this relevance by steering "the conversation".

i understand the meta point that there is some intrinsic value of knowing that millions of other people are watching the same show unfold (the best recent example of this is the last segments of breaking bad), but just because that is a historical paradigm doesn't mean that it's more valuable or better than binge watching and the new forms of discussion.

the biggest advantage of "full drop" is that we get to have pretty close discussions about the entirety of a season, which is important in the modern TV era. the shift from episodic to serial structures is the biggest driving force of the modern era of tv, and "full drop" supports this view/analysis.

there are inherent disadvantages of the weekly format, namely falling behind and then being behind the conversation, which decreases interest. i was 3 or 4 episodes behind true detective season 2 and thanks to DVR and "new media" methods of fully dropping all previously-aired episodes, i could participate by the end (not that the individual show was worthy of such participation).

another disadvantage, and i'll use TDS2 again, is that when a series has a lull, it's far more likely to see a tailing off of interest. there were lots of people who "gave up" on TDS2 because it was very terrible for the first 4 eps or so. there was some late redemption, but "the conversation" lost a good number of participants due to the weekly format. a binge makes it far more likely that people will push through, again, to observe the series as a whole.

there are advantage and disadvantages to both, but this kind of self-serving (loathing?) commentary does nothing to really further the discussion

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In fact, it's worse than that: on the day a full-drop show is delivered, everyone can't possibly be fully caught up instantly, so everything in it is treated like a spoiler, meaning it's too soon to talk about it. But it's also finished its run, in a sense, so in short order, it's too late to talk about it.

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this is just online, mega-sized, professional media complaining that they may be going the way of print and trying to tell us why we're so stupid for making our own minds up about media.