Breaking the wheel?

Age of the Geek Column: Welp, that's all folks. The watch ended for millions of people on Sunday with the final episode of "Game of Thrones."
What an event that was. How rare is it these days that a mass audience across the globe simultaneously sits down to watch a television program that wasn't a live broadcast.
It didn't used to be of course. Once upon a time that was the norm. From the season finale of "M*A*S*H" all the way to the end of "Breaking Bad," it's been a given that these cultural touchstones had to be experienced at a specific time.
It wasn't so long ago that TV broadcasts forced audiences to adhere to their schedule instead of the other way around. But who has time for that nowadays? Now we have on-demand streaming and DVRs to watch things on our schedule.
In the age of streaming on-demand, it has been questioned if we'll ever get a pop-culture event like "Game of Thrones" again. A show so big that western civilization grinds to a halt once a week to simultaneously consume it.
Viewing habits are increasingly leaning towards on-demand streaming, the major benefit of which is that you control when you watch something. No more racing home to plop yourself on the couch at 8:00 so you don't miss anything. No more setting the DVR (or programming the VCR, if you're old enough to remember those) if you can't be there to watch it live.
Netflix, still the frontrunner in the streaming game, has produced some seriously popular shows, but their method of releasing entire seasons at once means that it doesn't receive the benefit of the weekly viewing ritual. Every viewer is free to watch the show at their own pace, leaving the audience divided as relatively few viewers will be on the same page at the same time. While there is something to be said for the convenience of being able to binge-watch a show, it comes at a cost. With no weekly delay between episodes, there's no window to speculate about what might happen from one episode to the next.
However, while streaming services are slowly but surely overtaking regularly scheduled broadcasts, I don't think the tradition of the weekly release will be lost to history.
While Netflix and other services like YouTube and Amazon have been utilizing the binge-watch method of release, other newcomers to the market have kept the traditional model.
CBS, for instance, didn't abandon their weekly release schedule when they launched their dedicated streaming service. New episodes of "Star Trek: Discovery" are slow-dripped out once a week just as they would be on broadcast television. DC Universe has likewise adopted a weekly release schedule for their original content.
I feel confident that the weekly ritual will continue for two reasons. The first is that, as "Game of Thrones" has proved, there's value in the staggered release. Every article written about reactions to the most recent episode and speculation about the next is free advertising that is lost if the entire season is released in one go. The weekly anticipation creates a momentum that can elevate a show from "popular" to "cultural landmark" in a way that just cannot be done with the binge method.
The second is that staggered releases are inherently better for any service utilizing a monthly subscription model. As HBO is doubtlessly experiencing right now, there is a subsect of viewers that will only keep their subscriptions active for as long as they need to consume the show they are there for. Just as HBO GO assuredly received a huge boost in subscribers shortly before the final season of "Game of Thrones" started, they just as assuredly saw a wave of cancelations on Monday morning.
Under the Netflix model, people could subscribe, binge the entire season in a weekend, and immediately put their subscription on hold. Instead, HBO got at least two months of subscription payments out of their six episodes. If you have a show that you know will entice people to subscribe to your service, you may as well make them stick around for as long as you can keep them.
Broadcast TV is on the way out, but that doesn't mean millions of people will stop setting aside an hour of their night to catch the most recent episode of a show at the earliest opportunity.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and wonders what the next big thing will be. Maybe "The Mandalorian?"