Content as a Product: The Future of Consuming Television in a Streaming World Part I

An insider's analysis of streaming's billion-dollar blindspot—and a product-driven framework for building television's next cultural phenomena

Remember gathering around the TV for a season finale and the anticipation building as millions tuned in at exactly the same moment? That shared cultural heartbeat has become increasingly rare in our streaming age. As someone who straddles both worlds - a product manager at a major streaming platform by day and a television writer by night - I've watched this transformation unfold from unique vantage points.

While streaming has revolutionized content access, it's disrupted television's power to create electric moments of collective experience. The metrics driving streaming success - watch time, completion rates, binge behavior - miss something crucial: the cultural gravity that once made television series generational touchstones. These traditional metrics have instead fueled an industry-wide pattern of serial churners who subscribe, binge, and cancel, creating an unsustainable cycle that undermines both cultural impact and business growth.

This two-part exploration examines why today's tv shows, despite their sophisticated storytelling, rarely achieve lasting cultural impact, and how streaming platforms can evolve beyond conventional metrics to foster deeper audience connections and drive customer lifetime value in this new landscape.

From Water Cooler to Watch Queue: Television's Cultural Transformation

Let’s rewind the clock to 9 PM on a Sunday in 2007. Millions of Americans are settling in to watch The Sopranos, knowing tomorrow they'll gather around office water coolers to dissect every moment. This wasn't just appointment viewing; it was a cultural ritual that bound audiences together through shared anticipation and collective discovery. Today, that communal experience has largely vanished. In our streaming world, viewers watch in isolation, on their own schedules, fragmenting what was once a unifying cultural phenomenon.

Streaming platforms have mastered immediate gratification, but at a cost: they've eroded the deep emotional investment that once transformed shows like Game of Thrones into cultural phenomena. Instead of fostering anticipation for "the next episode of my show," these platforms have conditioned viewers to approach content with the mindset of "I need something to watch." It's like choosing between fast food and an omakase dinner – both satisfy hunger, but only one creates an experience worth remembering and sharing. When content becomes interchangeable entertainment rather than a cherished ritual, we lose the magic that turns watching television from a passive activity into a meaningful journey.

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The Numbers Game: When Streaming Success Kills Cultural Impact

The challenge lies deeper than content quality - it's rooted in how stories reach and resonate with audiences. In 2017, when Netflix's former CEO Reed Hastings declared sleep as their main competitor, he revealed an industry-wide fixation on maximizing watch time above all else to compete in the blitz-scaling era of Silicon Valley. However, in today's saturated media landscape, where content options are endless and attention is scarce, this metric-driven approach overlooks a crucial truth: viewers don't just return for mere entertainment.

The streaming revolution began with promise. When Netflix pioneered the market, it freed creators from traditional network constraints, following HBO's groundbreaking model of allowing more experimental, authentic storytelling. Shows like House of Cards and The Crown emerged from this creative freedom, backed by seemingly infinite content budgets. Yet these series, despite their quality, haven't achieved the cultural staying power of traditional network shows like The West Wing or Downton Abbey.

In 2018, this paradox became evident when HBO was acquired by AT&T. Warner Media's leadership, determined to outperform Netflix, learned a costly lesson: prestige content isn't always compatible with the metrics-driven pursuit of mass audience engagement and increased watch time.

Beyond Binge Metrics: The Hidden Cost of Instant Gratification

When it comes to binging versus weekly programming for tv series, the key difference isn't content quality – it's a distinctively different customer experience and this idea isn’t new. In a 2015 Vox article, media critic Emily St. James and media scholar, Scott Eric Kauffman contrast the experience of watching Halt and Catch a Fire when it aired on AMC in 2014 versus binging the series on Netflix. Kauffman concluded, “Binge-watching fundamentally changes the basic unit of cinematic storytelling.”

The shift toward binge-watching comes with hidden costs, despite satisfying our appetite for immediate gratification. This model inadvertently undermines the creator incentive for careful world-building and character development that historically created lasting cultural impact. When shows drop all at once, they often prioritize immediate engagement over sustained storytelling—the kind that builds deep viewer investment and ultimately drives long-term value. As streaming platforms increasingly measure success through hours watched, creators face a crucial dilemma: Does this environment still incentivize the creation of generational phenomena like Star Wars or Game of Thrones?

An article from Rolling Stone highlights how streaming has fundamentally altered series structure, with seasons shrinking to roughly ten episodes. While this format can yield tighter storytelling, it often results in what feels like extended movies rather than true television series. This condensed approach, while efficient, may limit a show's potential to embed itself in the cultural consciousness. Though algorithms excel at optimizing watch time, they struggle to create the environment necessary for transforming casual viewers into devoted fans.

Consider The Sopranos, with its expansive seasons of 13+ episodes. The series wasn't designed for binge-watching—it was crafted as a weekly ritual that spanned years, creating a shared social experience akin to following a sports team. Each week brought new anticipation, discussions, and communal speculation about which character might meet their end. This extended engagement fostered a deeper connection with the story and its world, building a loyal audience that remained engaged for almost a decade while it aired and invested for decades to come.

Television's "golden age" illuminates why this matters. Weekly programming required shows to maintain a compelling narrative rhythm that could sustain viewing rituals, while advertising revenue demanded consistent quality. In addition, there’s a financial incentive to keep the show running for at least five seasons for syndication residuals and cultural relevance for franchise potential. Viewers didn't merely tune in to see plot resolutions—they returned week after week. Whether it was the multi-year investment of the “will-they won’t-they” plot line between Ross and Rachel in hit sitcom Friends or the cathartic comfort of dark humor about the mundane routines of daily life on Seinfeld, these stories forged emotional bonds. These characters became an extension of a home and created a world viewers could inhabit between episodes and across years. The weekly cadence wasn't just about creating viewing habits; it was about nurturing cultural phenomena.

Reimagining the Digital Water-Cooler: Building Tomorrow's TV Culture

This model of sustained engagement offers crucial insights for today's streaming landscape. The solution lies in expanding how we define successful content engagement in a digital world. Great stories aren't just about plot; they're about creating immersive universes that viewers want to inhabit and discuss. Game of Thrones exemplifies this approach – its meticulously crafted world fostered generational fandom through authentic world-building that prioritized storytelling over immediate metrics.

While "water cooler" conversations have evolved into digital discussions and fan theories, most platforms have failed to capitalize on this transformation. The future of television demands that streaming platforms evolve from content libraries into experience architects. By leveraging cost reducing technologies to optimize content repurposing and micro-audience targeting, they can create environments where stories become cultural touchstones that sustain engagement beyond the immediate release window.

In today’s content consumption landscape, it demands we think beyond traditional episodes – it challenges us to build expansive story worlds that deepen audience investment. By crafting supplemental content that enriches rather than fragments the viewing experience, creators and platforms can leverage digital ecosystems to transform casual viewers into engaged communities. This approach doesn't just adapt to modern consumption patterns; it creates lasting narrative universes that resonate across generations.

Television's Strategic Reset: Where Classic Fandoms Meet Modern Engagement

The contrast between traditional television and today's streaming landscape reveals a striking paradox: despite an unprecedented volume of content, platforms struggle to maintain subscriber loyalty. This challenge presents two critical imperatives for the industry:

1. The Legacy IP Alchemy: Creating Evergreen Content Engines

The first challenge is transforming how we present classic series in the streaming era. Shows like The Sopranos weren't designed for binge viewing, yet their storytelling power remains undiminished. The opportunity lies not in reinventing the wheel, but in leveraging the rich ecosystem of fan-created content and discussion that already exists across digital platforms.

Classic series have inspired vast libraries of analysis videos on YouTube, scene breakdowns on TikTok, and ongoing discussions across social media platforms. Rather than building new infrastructure, streaming platforms should focus on integrating with these existing communities and content. Fan-created episode guides, cultural analysis, and historical context already thrive on these platforms, offering natural pause points and deeper engagement opportunities for new viewers. By acknowledging and elevating this existing ecosystem, platforms can enhance the viewing experience while respecting both the original episodic structure and the organic way modern audiences discover and discuss content.

2. Breaking Media Company Silos: The New Methods of TV Development

The second imperative is revolutionizing how we approach new series development. Future shows must be conceived not just as linear narratives, but as expansive worlds that invite exploration and community engagement. This requires a fundamental shift in how stories are structured, moving beyond traditional episode formats to create narrative architectures that work seamlessly across both weekly and binge viewing patterns.

In today's digital water-cooler landscape, creating lasting cultural relevance means reverse engineering the viewer experience. Streaming platforms have the advantage at monetizing micro-audiences, and with software solutions to optimize content repurposing, there's an unprecedented opportunity to design television content around an experience economy from the ground up. This approach doesn't just extend a show's lifespan—it transforms it into a living, breathing ecosystem that can thrive for decades after its initial release.

In my next article, Content as a Product: The Future of Consuming Television in a Streaming World Part II, I’ll dive into specific strategies and case studies on how these concepts could be applied to any streaming platform that serves tv series in their catalog.