Binge TV

<p> For the first 70 years of television broadcasters dictated the terms of the viewing experience deciding not only when but how much of a program an audience could watch. Binge-watching destroyed that model by placing control of the experience in the hands of the viewer.</p><p> In this book media scholar Emil Steiner chronicles the technological and cultural struggle between broadcasters and viewers which reached a climax in the early 2010s with the emergence of streaming video platforms. Through extensive interviews and archival research this groundbreaking project traces the history of binge-watching from its idiot box roots to the new normal of Peak TV. Along the way Steiner exposes the news campaigns waged by disruptive technology companies that exploited a long-simmering revolutionary narrative of viewer empowerment to take over the broadcast industry. Binge-watching an individual's act of gaining control and losing control through the remote control exposed a debate that had been raging since the first TV set was turned on--one that asks Who controls the story?</p>