Three-quarters of viewers ‘super binge’ says TiVo study

Some 75% of TiVo subscribers ‘super binge’ on content, watching an entire season (or more) of a specific programme over multiple days, according to a new survey by the DVR maker’s research arm.

TiVo Research and Analytics said that 14% of its survey respondents said they had super-binged within the past week, with 23% having done so between a week and a month prior to the survey.

In total, 91% of the 15,196 survey respondents said that binge viewing – watching three episodes of the same show in a row – was common behaviour, and the “preferred method of consuming entertainment content.”

Some 40% of respondents had binged within a week and 69% had binged within a month of the survey.

“When television seasons began in the fall and ended in May and the menu of great TV programs was shorter, viewers could use summer reruns to catch up on missed episodes of their favorite shows. Today, though, the menu of available television fare has expanded to include thousands of channels, original programming from broadcast, cable and over-the-top sources and year-round premieres. It is now literally impossible for viewers to see all the shows they enjoy when they are first broadcast, and there’s no ‘summer break’ when viewers can catch up. But thanks to the control over cable, broadcast and OTT content afforded by TiVo, and to the proliferation of streaming services like Netflix, binge-viewing has rapidly become common practice,” said TiVo chief research officer Jonathan Steuer.

The study cited TiVo as the most common source for binged programmes with Netflix in second place at 29%.