Commentary

Demand Grows For 'Mandalorian,' Disney+ Releases One Episode Weekly

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. TV absence makes the heart yearn for the next episode.

Streaming TV scheduling is one of the major differences between Netflix and Disney+.

Disney+ is releasing its new original series one episode at a time. Netflix has a policy of releasing new TV series episodes per season all at the same time -- catering to big-time TV bingers, as well as more laid-back TV streaming consumers.

In particular, this business philosophy is evident with Disney+’s  decision to release its high-demand "Star Wars"-themed TV series “The Mandalorian” weekly.

Some results are already in. “Mandalorian” is generating high “demand” metrics. Parrot Analytics says “Mandalorian” is currently the third-most “in-demand” original streaming show -- 39.9 million ‘demand expressions.’

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Parrot says demand expressions comes from blog and microblog sites, research sites (Wikipedia, Reddit, etc), review sites (Rotten Tomatoes, newspapers, etc), video sites for trailers (YouTube, etc), streaming and social-media sites.

In second place after “The Mandalorian” is DC Univers's ''Titans” -- 57 million demand expressions. But the top streaming TV series? That is Netflix’s “Stranger Things” series, which is at  massive 101.6 million demand expressions.

So what does this say? That giving users choice in how they consume episodes of TV series works — be it all at the same time or an episode weekly. Viewing options are necessary due to greater media choices, and seemingly, a limited amount of media time available to consumers. Binging is still very popular. But other media time is popular, too.

Netflix has been around a relatively long time -- versus Disney+ (and Apple TV). That fact shouldn’t be discounted.

Though Disney has a history as a major producer of TV and movie content, much of that content is spoken for on other TV/film distribution platforms. So if Disney+ is doling out TV episodes one at a time, all this makes sense. It doesn’t have the scale to compete with Netflix.

Parrot Analytics analysis says: “Given Disney's episodic release strategy, we expect demand for ‘The Mandalorian’ to continue to grow further as new episodes become available to stream over the next several weeks.”

When it comes to marketing entertainment in a digital world, this is still a good approach. TV continues to be a big tease.

1 comment about "Demand Grows For 'Mandalorian,' Disney+ Releases One Episode Weekly".
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  1. John Grono from GAP Research, November 22, 2019 at 3:55 p.m.

    'Demand Impressions'.

    One has to wonder does that include any and all attempts to get the content - whether they worked or failed.

    For example, you click ... nothing happens ... you click again ... and again.   You close the browser or app and try again .. still nothing.   Lots of 'demand impressions' and not even one 'stream start'.

    Could this be a new contender for the "4Ms" (Most Meanigless Media Metric) nudging out stream starts? 

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