Is Binge Watching the New Normal?

America’s status as a binge watching, streaming, multitasking nation enters 2017 with strong momentum according to a Survey.

“American consumers continued to stream, binge watch and demand more media in 2016. As the growing forces of social media and over-the-top services continue to accelerate, particularly among millennials and Generation Z, the consumer rules,” said Kevin Westcott, vice chairman and U.S. media and entertainment leader, Deloitte LLP. “The shift to streaming, mobile, on-demand services, and personalization are significant opportunities in 2017. Brands can bring new value, services, and incredibly entertaining content to the empowered consumers across all age groups in a manner that can be monetized.”

Deloitte’s “Digital Democracy Survey” released today showed that nearly three quarters (73 percent) of U.S. consumers (up 3 percent from 2015) and nearly 90 percent of millennials and Gen Z have binge watched video content; almost 40 percent of millennial and Gen Z binge watchers do so weekly. Millennial and Gen Z binge watchers report watching an average of six episodes, or five hours of content, in a single sitting.

With 84 percent of Americans on social networks – social media has evolved well beyond “socializing.” and is being used to discover new content, get news and resolve customer service issues. Online recommendations on social media (27 percent) are more influential than TV ads (18 percent) for Gen Z in influencing buying decisions and over 50 percent of Gen Z and millennials use social networks to learn about new TV shows, finding it to be more useful than TV commercials.

The device of choice for key demographics remains split; Gen Z and millennials spend about half their time watching television shows and movies on devices other than a TV. Additionally, Gen X favors the TV by over 60 percent and Baby Boomers watch over 80 percent of programming on the TV.

Seventy-four percent of consumers across U.S. households still subscribe to pay TV such as cable or satellite, but 66 percent of subscribers say they keep their pay TV because it is bundled with their internet.