Netflix, Cliff-hangers and the Death of Delayed Gratification

There was a time (well before my time) when people who went to the movies saw more than one movie. There would be a newsreel, some cartoons, a short serial movie and then one or two longer movies. The serial movie was a multi chapter movie in which every chapter ended with the heroine or hero in a precarious situation.  The films were designed to bring back the audience the following week to see how the hero or heroine got out deadly trap or got untied before the train ran them over or stopped themselves from plummeting to their death. It was a clever marketing device.

And then came television. Initially with limited choice in terms of programs, producers did not have to work hard to attract viewers week after week. However, when there were more than two or three television stations available in any one area, advertisers and program producers started to look for ways of getting the audience to return for the next week. An obvious and well tested method was to end each program with a cliff-hanger - some event that would, at the very least, rouse some curiosity as to what would happen next. Day time dramas (soap operas) have frequently used this device and almost all hour long shows especially at the end of their season have some sort of season finale that is designed to attract viewers back in the fall.

With the advent of such companies as Netflix , Amazon or Crackle, customers no longer need to patiently wait a week, or perhaps the summer, for the next hour of their favourite program. They can binge watch an entire series all at one time. Plots that may have taken thirteen or more weeks to evolve can be seen in one long viewing session. In a week, one can watch four or five years of a program. The viewer no longer needs to patiently wait  to see how the cast of Gray's Anatomy or the Walking Dead will resolve the next crisis - they only have to wait about 19 seconds for the next program in the series to start.

I would never suggest that people's inability to wait a week to find out what will happen next to their favourite character is the root of all of the world's problems. But there are other signs that our capacity to wait to get rewarded for anything is decreasing. We expect our news to be instantly delivered to our phones, we are hurt when people do not respond to our emails immediately and certainly our bosses expect us to be available at all hours. We live in a world where gratification of all our needs is expected to be instantaneous. If it is not - we assume the right to complain about poor service. Educational programs are designed to feed information in short bursts - with an immediate reward for the young viewer; computer games are designed to frequently reward players so that they will continue playing (Seidman, theweek); even college text books are designed to make the information simple to find. It feels as if people can no longer be expected to wait or to work for their rewards. 

Binge watching a whole season's worth of  Dexter or Breaking Bad is only proof that most of us have no desire to delay our gratifications - binge watching by itself, is not the cause.  But surely it is a symptom of what ails society. It might be useful for us to remember that sometimes waiting to eat the cherry last is in fact, the most rewarding way of eating a sundae.