Appointment TV isn’t dead. It’s making a comeback on streaming platforms.

When Netflix popularized the binge model a decade ago, it brought with it a new way to consume television. Tuning in at a specific time for a live event or a single episode of your favorite TV show was no longer the only option.

That’s why a comment by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos on April 18, during the company’s Q1 2024 earnings call, stood out. Streaming, he said, has “really put the controls of television back in the hands of consumers.” But he added, “There’s also something incredibly magic about folks gathering around a TV together in a living room to watch something together all at the same time.”

He was referring to an upcoming boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson that will be livestreamed on Netflix. It marks another step in Netflix’s live events strategy, particularly sports, which also includes a new deal with WWE’s Raw beginning in 2025.

“Content decisions are going to be made by what has the most ad-revenue potential, and that’s what we’re seeing with Netflix with its early days of dabbling with live programming,” Mike Proulx, VP and research director at Forrester, tells The Current.

Sarandos’ comments, and Netflix’s slow but steady embrace of live sports, highlight a recent trend in the larger premium streaming space. Appointment television — viewers tuning in to the same telecast at the same time, largely thought to be obsolete in streaming — is flourishing on subscription video on demand platforms, most of which now offer ad-supported plans. The rise of streaming brought with it a certain kind of freedom for viewers; they could watch anything at any time. But appointment TV may not be exclusive to linear TV sports events anymore, as sports rights increasingly shift to streaming apps.

This year’s March Madness NCAA women’s championship, which aired on ESPN and ESPN+, was the most-watched college basketball game ever, peaking with 24 million viewers. Peacock’s exclusive NFL playoff game in January was the most-streamed live event in the U.S. ever. The Premier League is seeing record viewership in the U.S. this season, also on Peacock. This year’s Super Bowl was the biggest TV event in U.S. history across Paramount’s platforms, including Paramount+.

What do all these record-breaking live sports events have in common? They were all either exclusive to streaming or were simulcast on a streaming platform.

“[Streamers] are tapping in to advertising as an additional revenue stream and in order to attract advertisers you need to demonstrate scale,” Proulx says. “What many brands covet is this idea of big tentpole moments.”

Leaning away from the binge model

Those moments don’t just include live sports, but live events in general. The Grammys drew 17 million viewers this year, for instance, a 34% rise in viewership likely helped by a Paramount+ simulcast.

Further, some streamers often debut new episodes of original programs weekly on certain days and times, a throwback to traditional linear TV, such as NBC’s Thursday night Must See TV block in the 1990s. If you wanted to watch new episodes of Loki season two on Disney+ last year, you could stream it starting at 9 p.m. ET on Thursdays. Original programming from cable networks like HBO, Showtime and FX also stream on their streaming counterparts — Max, Paramount+ and Hulu, respectively — which has also contributed to this trend.

In streaming, the weekly model can help combat churn. In a recent newsletter for Puck, Parrot Analytics VP of Strategy Julia Alexander noted that shows with weekly releases keep viewers engaged and have lower “decay rates,” or the rate at which viewers drop off of a TV show. If they’re engaged over a longer period, they’re more likely to stay subscribed.

“Between 2016 and 2023, more than 40 of the top 50 in-demand series with low decay rates were weekly releases,” Alexander wrote, citing Parrot Analytics data. “By comparison, when viewers get fatigued by a binge-released show, they tend to stop watching altogether.”

Sure, some streamers continue to utilize the binge model; it’s still Netflix’s main strategy and Prime Video recently dropped all episodes of its video-game adaptation Fallout at the same time. But Alexander wrote that the series “ticks all the boxes for a show that would have thrived as a weekly release” and that Amazon “would have benefited more from releasing Fallout episodically, especially when interest in the IP [intellectual property] is this high.”

Even Netflix has experimented with different release strategies for select originals. It has split some seasons of hit originals into separate parts, including Stranger Things season four and The Crown season six.

For its hit reality series Love Is Blind, Netflix spread out episodes over several weeks, with the finale airing on its own at a specific time. The week that that episode debuted in March, the series drove 1.5 billion viewing minutes in the U.S., according to Nielsen; the finale accounted for a third of that (or 500 million minutes), half of which came on the day of its release, Nielsen said.

“By spreading [episodes] out, streamers just get a lot more [engagement] for their investment,” says Brian Fuhrer, SVP of product strategy and thought leadership at Nielsen.

“What’s really important to the episodic release strategy is not overwhelming viewers,” he adds, as streaming options are so plentiful right now.

‘All TV is going to be streaming TV’

It all seems to point to streaming shifting into something more akin to traditional TV. Even Disney+ is reportedly considering launching always-on channels on Disney+. But for advertisers, streaming can come with the advanced targeting capabilities and flexibility of a digital connected TV (CTV) ecosystem.

“Anything that is engaging, or you have the ability to look at specific audiences, is going to be important to a brand,” says Alex Holtz, research director of worldwide media and entertainment strategies at IDC. Holtz also says that CTV can expand interactivity between consumers and brands, particularly during live sports, which could “redefine” appointment TV and drive engagement.

So is streaming inching closer to traditional TV, or evolving into something new? Whatever the case, some experts think streaming is the future.

“There’s going to come a time, and now it’s in the not-so-distant future, that all TV is going to be streaming TV,” Proulx says. “What we end up with is the television content that we’ve always loved, distributed a different way, trading cable for the internet.”