Amazon To Follow Netflix’s Lead On A Binge-Watching Model

Amazon is taking a page out of Netflix’s book.

These days loyalty and sometimes the longevity of a show rests in how much fans binge-watch. Netflix was ahead of the curve by letting users stream TV shows for a price by releasing favorites like Breaking Bad and Grey’s Anatomy season by season. In some cases it revived shows (The Killing) and allowed the streaming service to create their own successful content.

Amazon, as well as the rest of the media, has recognized how well this model has worked. To capitalize on that, the site will allow fans to binge watch television shows on their own streaming platform.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Amazon Studios, a division of the site that helps the development of original content, is trying this format out.

“The TV studio division of the online retailer plans to make available all 10 episodes of its new dark comedy ‘Transparent’ at the same time this fall.”

This is the second wave of huge news to come out of Amazon’s camp since the release of their original shows like Alpha House, and Betas, which rolled out last year. To engage viewers with their original content, Amazon rolled out new episodes, but now it’s all going to change.

According to Amazon Studios chief Roy Price, he told Vulture that there’s “a certain degree of enthusiasm” for the binge-watching model made famous by Netflix. Not quite admitting that their format wasn’t working, Price said, “[S]ometimes the only way to understand something is to try different approaches.”

So what did Amazon learn as a studio in its first year of development? Releasing episode by episode wasn’t the best decision in terms of creating a social media discussion.

“The social media conversation related to the show tends to decline more rapidly than with a normal show.”

Fans have a lot to look forward to as far as new content from Amazon Studios. It plans to debut the new show Transparent sometime in late September, where it’s been promised that the studio will release a big chunk of their episodes all at once.

Transparent sounds pretty promising. It stars Jeffrey Tambor, Jay Duplass, and Gaby Hoffmann, and is a “darkly comedic story about an LA family with serious boundary issues… in this exploration of sex, memory, gender and legacy, the past and future unravel when a dramatic admission causes everyone’s secrets to spill out.”

Who knows? Next year we could be reporting about possible Emmy nominations for Amazon Studios content.

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