And ads. Lots of ads.
Did they say ads?
If it weren’t for those pesky content breaks every now and then, they could serve even more ads. Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?
Minus ad breaks, I missed this aspect of content consumption. Choosing to watch a random episode of a random show just doesn’t happen and I missed being able to just “see what’s on”. I spent a fair amount of time setting up random “channels” I can tune into that play random episodes from tv shows on my media server and it’s great.
A lot of newer shows cannot be watched randomly though because the episodes actually build upon each other.
If you take older shows like TNG or X files: you could easily jump back in after missing half a season. The episodes were written to be mostly self-contained, because missing an episode or two because of life was very very common. Season finales were often a major exception, and were therefore also majority advertised so people knew to plan around them.
If you write a show for streaming, however, there is no concept of “missing an episode”. So the writers are freed from that constraint, and subsequently write shows that are only meant to be watched in their entirety, in order.
