TV WATCHERS ASKED TO RECALL THEIR FIRST ALL NIGHTER
I REMEMBER my first time.
Not that “first time”, don’t be gross.
I remember my first binge sessions. It was 1998 and Buffy The Vampire Slayer had aired on Channel 7 the summer before. When the episodes were repeated on Foxtel some months later, I made my friend Megan record them for me on VHS.
I kept those VHS tapes for years, watching them for hours, until DVDs became more popular and I could replace the cassettes with box sets that used to cost $160 per season.
Oh man, DVDs were so expensive back then.
Fast forward 20 years and binging has become a byword for watching TV.
Consuming two, three or four episodes at a time is just the norm now. Binging an entire season over a weekend barely raises an eyebrow from co-workers when you regale them with tales of your notso-epic weekend.
Gorged the whole first season of UnReal in one night? No one is judging you. Promise. Binged all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica, plus the miniseries and two TV movies twice in six weeks? There may be some judgment. I’m definitely not saying I haven’t done either of those things. Nope, not saying that at all.
While it didn’t invent bingewatching, Netflix really wants to own the concept.
The streaming company can certainly lay claim to popularising the practice — it just makes it so easy with its autoplay feature, queuing up the next episode before you’d even decided you wanted it. Who wants to go outside? There are bugs outside.
Netflix has launched a campaign encouraging viewers to remember and share their cherry-popping binge. If you can’t remember your first Netflix binge, just go to your account page, select viewing activity and scroll all the way to the bottom.
According to its numbers, the majority of users finish a season of TV in three days.
In Australia, the shows Netflix users binge first are Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things, Narcos, Vikings and Suits.
What was the first TV show you binged? And did you need eye-drops afterwards?