It’s not a stretch to say that the last few years have been a stressful time. Whether it’s because of disease, money concerns, environmental concerns or in some places recently not being able to go outside because the air was unbreathable, we all have to find ways to cope with stress. One way that people have always done so is by simply checking out a movie or TV show and escaping into another world or maybe just a world with somebody else’s problems on display instead of their own. A new study from Plex and research company OnePoll took a look at how watching TV can affect our moods and recently shared the information.
The poll of 2,000 Americans showed that 67% agree the best cure for a bad day is to watch a comfort show or movie. While health experts recommend you know, exercise etc might be the best way to deal with a bad day and stress, the realistic among us know that most of us just want to take a load off. But while watching TV can affect how we feel 81% of respondents reported that their mood influences what they watch on TV in the first place.
For instance, 49% said they can’t watch movies or shows that deal with heavy or stressful topics unless they’re “in the right mood.” That hits home
for me on a personal level. During the strict lockdowns of the Covid 19 pandemic I could not bring myself to watch post-apocalyptic stories nor did I jump in with the millions of people checking out Outbreak, which rose to new fame years after it hit the screen due to its fairly accurate depiction of what would happen if a dangerous new disease spread quickly around the world. It was all a little too close to home for me.
On average, Americans reported feeling the emotional impact of what they watch for up to two hours afterwards with men reportedly feeling the impact longer than women (2.4 hours compared to 1.6 hours).
When it comes to favorite TV shows viewers with no guardrails have the choice to take in entire series over the course of weeks if they so chose to but as we have gotten used to the availability of binging shows it seems that some have decided to slow it down. while 2 in 3 like to binge-watch their favorite shows 49% admit they get into a post-watch funk — not knowing what to do or what to watch next — after binge-watching an entire series.
Because of that 53% have purposely drawn-out watching episodes of certain shows so they can enjoy it longer. Maybe the same bat time same bat channel model had a bit of wisdom built in after all.
People have had the ability to binge series since Netflix launched as a streaming platform and people took advantage of that ability. It essentially changed the way we looked at watching TV. But bit by bit we have seen streaming services try to claw back the power of scheduling TV, at least a little bit, by releasing episodes of new original series on a weekly basis. Of course, while there is no “appointment” television with streaming fans have had to at least get back in the habit of waiting till a certain day of the week to see their shows. When they watch it is up to them.
Amazon, Disney+, Paramount+ and Hulu notably have made their signature series weekly releases making fans of shows like The Mandalorian or the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel pine for the next episode while they are “forced” to find something else to check out. Of course the streamers probably hope that viewers will choose to take in another suggestion by the service. In a twist nobody saw coming it turns out that viewers still gravitate to both live TV and curated scheduled TV leading to the popularity of free streaming services like Pluto TV, Xumo and Plex’s own group of hundreds of streaming channels.
