NPR Highlights Binge-Watching Research

"All across the television landscape, viewers are changing how they watch TV," a host of NPR's Morning Edition recently noted. "Instead of taking in episodes of hit shows like 'The Big Bang Theory' once a week, people are stockpiling episodes to watch them later."

But as Wendy W. Moe, a professor of marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, told NPR correspondent Shankar Vedantam, there are downsides for advertisers when viewers binge-watch their favorite shows. As Moe put it: "The binge watchers don't respond to advertising nearly as much as the people who are just casual viewers. We find that non-binge viewers are more likely to actually engage in click-through on the ads, whereas the binge viewers have a much lower response rate."

"There are many (streaming) platforms that depend on advertising revenue," Vedantam pointed out. "If Moe's theory is right, shows on platforms such as Netflix or HBO might be better off because they're less dependent on advertising. You pay a monthly subscription fee to access those services." Listen to the Morning Edition segment:

And read the Smith Brain Trust summary of Moe's binge-watching study here.