Intriguing Insights #008 The paradox of binge-snacking

First let me apologise for the time lapse since my last post. Had an eye infection and doctor's orders were reducing screen time and sleeping early. Both unfortunately, prerequisites for my writing. 

But getting back to today's subject. Let me clarify, in case the title has thrown you off. This piece is not about snacking while binge watching or binging on junk food. Today's topic is about the paradox in our viewing habits. On one end of the spectrum is binge viewing - where we immerse ourselves in hours of consumption of our chosen form of content. And at the other end is content snacking  - consuming bite-sized pieces of messaging. 

Each in a way is the antithesis of the other and yet both are prevalent to a great measure when we look at how we consume content today. I have looked at entertainment and sports and how we need both snackable and bingeable variations from them to suit our needs at a given point in time.

But before we get into more details on these, let us look at the reason behind why we binge and why we snack. Each comes from a very different place, and hence the need we are looking to fulfil with each is rather different and unique.

Binging

You may remember my reference to binging in my post on Behavioral Economics. Capturing the key motivation behind binging here. Well, binging is more to offset something else that is unpleasant... so we feel cooped up all day we binge watch TV at night... we are bored or unhappy we binge on chocolates. The splurging our mind allows us to make in one area is often to compensate for the pain we are suffering somewhere else. No wonder then, many people seem to complaining about overeating, oversleeping, too much of OTT viewing, too much of gaming or then too much of shopping while in lockdown.

Snacking

Snacking on the other hand comes from two places. The first is the omnipresent smart phone which we have on us pretty much all of the time. This means if I have time to kill, could be while travelling or waiting for someone or just a quick break - I want short pieces of content that can effectively fill up that time slot while being complete in themselves. The second reason is reducing attention spans.  In fact, a study by Microsoft concluded that the human attention span has dropped to eight seconds – shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years. This means the only way we can keep a consumer interested in our content offering is by ensuring it is short.

And there comes that incongruity again - does the consumer want to binge or snack - and when should we cater to which of these needs. I am not going to attempt to answer that question, but instead just look at the behaviour of consumers and how they are currently interacting with their content.

Entertainment

We are all guilty of binge watching our favourite shows. While Netflix seems to be steering clear of making a reference to it in the recent past with all the negative chatter around binge watching, some of the older released data is quite fascinating. To quote them from a 2017 article - In total, 8.4 million members have chosen to Binge Race during their Netflix tenure, and the only thing faster than their rate of watching is the rate this behavior continues to grow. Between 2013 and 2016 the amount of launch day finishers increased more than 20 times over. Binge Racers strive to be the first to finish by speeding through an entire season within 24 hours of its release. Netflix members around the world watched more than 140 million hours per day (that’s a little more one billion hours per week in case you were wondering).

Now lets look at the other side of it. Launched in April 2019, Dish TV backed, OTT platform, Watcho focuses on short format content of about 15 minutes in duration across genres including web-series, topical shows, shayari (poetry) based shows, skill-based shows such as cooking and recipes. April 2020 data showed that the platform has witnessed a 50% surge in content consumption, over the past one month, leading to a steep hike in their subscriber base and adding 1 million new subscribers in a month bringing it up to 3.0 Million. Surely the lockdown played a huge hand in this but the numbers are good nonetheless. It is interesting to note here that the target audience for Watcho is the youth population of tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.

On the other hand,  Quibi, the American short-form mobile video platform launched in April 2020 has failed to perform as expected. Designed for on-the-go consumption, the lockdown here had infact an adverse impact on the success of the platform. However, it is still early days and snackable content may actually work for Quibi with the start of the unlockdown.

Sports

What was so special about July 14, 2019? Well, fans hail it as the best day of sports ever. We all remember this day - not just did we have a Wimbledon final between Djokovic and Federer combined with World Cup Cricket final, both matches were thrilling to the end. The cricket final went to a sudden death super over and the tennis match had a fifth set tie breaker. If this wasn't enough, sports enthusiasts were also treated with Lewis Hamilton’s record sixth British Grand Prix triumph. 

Now this certainly qualifies as sports binge watching. The current English Premier League, weekend schedule is no less of a binge, with as many as five matches on Sunday. And yet world over sports is moving to shorter, faster formats.

Let's take the two sports we were so happy to binge on just about a year ago. Both of them have snackable variations availbale.

Tie Break Tens is a tennis format in which only tie-break matches are played. There are no games or sets, only tie-break matches and the winner is the first player to reach 10 points and lead by a margin of two. That is typically 10-15 minutes long. Now contrast this with the 4 hours and 57 minutes that we saw Djokovic and Federer fight it out for.

Cricket's not behind either. From test cricket, to one-days, to Twenty20... and now 100 ball cricket and T10 cricket. 

With falling participation rates in many sports from swimming to golf,  the traditionally popular games are being turned to, to attract new participants and audiences. With increased screen time over shorter windows, it has  become mandatory for sports to innovate to stay relevant in today's technologically charged world. Thankfully, we still look forward to some weekend sports binging every now and again. 

Would love to hear from you in the comments below on other streams where you crave both binge-worthy and snack-worthy content.