The American adaptation of The Office It has been one of the favorite series during the pandemic. That a show that ended its television run in 2013 is still going strong with such popularity levels is a great achievement, especially if we take into account the insane flood of new releases that the platforms feed their services with on a weekly basis. But it makes sense.
The Greg Daniels series is a sitcom light, appropriate in the context of stress and worry that the pandemic has fueledand which naturally inclines us towards television as a form of escape. It also has many episodes (201 in total organised into 9 seasons) which allows us to cover daily entertainment without having to decide what to watch for quite some time.
Platforms do not usually provide data on the number of views of content on their services, but thanks to Nielsen’s SVOD content ratings panel in the US, we have information to contextualize the success. The Office It was, by far, the most watched program during 2020 in that country, accumulating More than 57 billion minutes watcheda long way from the next one on the list (Grey’s Anatomy).
The unexpected success of this program has led Peacock, the platform that holds the exclusive rights for that country, to create its different price levels based on the number of seasons of The Office to which the user wants to have access.
Peacock
At the base of this massive interest in a sitcom There is a phenomenon directly related to the experience of new viewers who approach it with the formula of binge watchingsuddenly and without having to respect the discipline of weekly broadcasting. There is a lot of academic literature that has broadly addressed the The effects that binge-watching has on our emotional stateThe culprit, to a large extent, is dopamine, a chemical signal related to pleasure that sends positive signals to our body and, therefore, encourages it to continue performing that task.
When you binge-watch a show that has gone through so many seasons, the high from watching it is often followed by a deep feeling of emptiness. This is the origin of what, in popular culture, has been called post-series depression. It consists of exactly that: a state of sadness after having watched (or read) a long series.
Series are no longer what they used to be: why Netflix, Amazon or HBO are promoting short formats that quickly hook you and what is the risk for the viewer
If binge-watching recently created series, which are increasingly shorter and more concentrated, could be associated with a one-night stand, doing so with content from free-to-air television, with a standard of 22-24 episodes, could be compared to a courtship. That is why the grief at the end in the first case is more visceral and fleeting, while in the second scenario it is more like a break-up. The viewer needs to reconcile a reality (that the journey in which he has been immersed for so long has ended) and a feeling (the desire for it not to end, however satisfactory the ending may have been).
Series naturally invite us to follow the characters over time and, therefore, we get involved in the things that happen to them. At a certain point, we can even anticipate the decisions they are going to make. Series play with this predisposition to what we think is going to happen. Meeting our expectations or destroying them is, in fact, a basic mechanism for getting hooked.. Watching content in a marathon format only intensifies all these emotions because continuity provides greater immersion in the story and we build relationships with what we see on screen. That’s why it’s so painful to say goodbye to them later. Even to Dwight Schrute. Who would have thought! And to the sadness of the end, let’s add how boring real life is when we compare it to the wonderful stories we see on television. That’s why returning to normality is sometimes so depressing.
One of the ways we naturally seek to return to a normal situation is by re-watching it, trying to recall all those positive feelings we have linked to the content. Another is group therapy. fandom The content that has emerged around major television and film phenomena in recent years is a perfect example of how many people seek solace in the passion of like-minded communities, remembering what made them happy and highlighting the impact that content had on their lives.
HBOMax, Wonder Woman 1984 and why the success of future entertainment will also depend on what happens in homes
Happiness and sadness have become two powerful drivers for content efficiency. They translate not only into rewatches but also into new viewings by people seduced by that series for which someone in their environment only has praise. This phenomenon also explains why the platforms have launched into making multi-million dollar bids to ensure similar content, sitcoms Most of them have had good results during their time on the grid:
- The Big Bang Theory: $600 million (HBOMax / US)
- Seinfeld: $200 million (Netflix / Worldwide)
- Friends: $425 million (HBOMax / US)
- The Office: $500 million (Peacock / USA)
I saw the final episode of The Office January 17, 2021. I had started seeing her in April of the previous year. A long time. Still, I thought it would last longer. That’s what she said.
Learn how we work at .
Tags: Trending, Netflix, Streaming, Series