Dragons vs. Elves: Who Has the Better Release Strategy?

HBO’s House of the Dragon and Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by HBO and Prime Video

In this era of video on demand, most streaming programmers have come to accept the Gospel According to Netflix: Audiences now watch TV shows when it’s convenient for them, and the specific time of day they arrive is irrelevant for streamers. This is why most streaming shows drop new episodes in the middle of the night, U.S. time; since we are all our own network schedulers now, deciding what to watch and when, there’s no reason to “program” new shows and movies for an optimal time of day. But the slightly different release patterns for Prime Video’s The Rings of Power and HBO’s House of the Dragon, along with some new Nielsen numbers, have had me thinking lately about the wisdom of the dogmatic approach pioneered by Netflix — and whether streamers should be thinking more about what time they release their original titles.

Because Dragon is produced under the banner of House HBO, its weekly episodes have been premiering on streaming counterpart HBO Max at the same time they’re fed to cable and satellite subscribers across the country: Sunday at 9 p.m. ET. By contrast, Prime Video is dropping episodes of TROP just after midnight ET on Fridays, the same day and hour almost all of the platform’s originals debut. Given Nielsen’s new numbers showing how well TROP is performing, it’s tempting to just conclude that the Netflix theory — time slots are a vestige of the linear age and simply don’t matter — has been correct all along.

But I don’t think that data is that clear-cut. For one thing, the Amazon-owned streamer actually released the first two episodes of TROP — the ones measured by today’s Nielsen report — at the much more (American) viewer-friendly hour of 9 p.m. ET. So if you were so inclined, you could make the case that the early start time is one of the reasons the show came out of the gate so strong. The more accurate way of analyzing the numbers, however, is to admit we have no idea if it made a difference — and may never know. Nielsen isn’t in the habit of releasing episode-specific data in its streaming report, so unless that changes, it’ll be hard to judge whether a three-hour difference really does boost early viewership. We do know, however, that in this one case, Prime execs thought timing mattered just enough to make a tweak to the platform’s usual release pattern. Even if it was just a ploy to pad the Nielsen numbers a bit, someone at Amazon decided there was a benefit to an earlier slot. And I think they were right.

Beyond the extra gravy it might have provided for the early ratings, dropping the first two episodes of TROP at a reasonable hour in all of the U.S. probably helped ensure the show trended on Twitter and generated lots of activity on other social-media channels the night of its premiere. Audiences all over America were able to see the show as soon as it debuted without risking exhaustion the next morning. And those who did could then act as social ambassadors for the series, posting about it on social media or talking about it at work the next day.

That more than anything is the reason streamers may want to bring back time slots for some shows: It’s good for PR and marketing. Even if technology had made the need for specific time periods a thing of the past, it hasn’t rendered obsolete the notion that humans sometimes like to be guided in making choices. And I think the potential social-media boost that prime-time premieres provide offers such assistance because it can act as a reminder to overwhelmed viewers: Ah, everybody’s talking about this episode. I should go check it out. We used to pick up TV Guide every night to remind us what we could be watching; these days, social media sometimes serves a similar function (though you can still subscribe to TV Guide!).

Indeed, the power of social media is part of the logic behind the trend toward platforms — including Netflix — moving away from the all-at-once binge model and instead offering either split seasons of certain shows or simply returning to weekly episodes. While stretching out the shelf life of a TV season from one weekend to two months helps reduce subscriber churn (because there’s less incentive to binge and ditch), many execs now believe it can also make it easier to get shows noticed by overwhelmed audiences. When people see online chatter about a show every week as new episodes drop, it essentially serves as free marketing for the series. It’s one reason why Prime decided to change up the release schedule for its hit The Boys, switching from the binge model in season one to a semi-episodic approach for season two (three episodes at launch, followed by one per week thereafter). The streamer wanted to capitalize on buzz around the show and bet that weekly releases would turn it into an even bigger success.

Similarly, streamers have been taking a page from the linear playbook by becoming more flexible about the days of the week their titles are released and, in some cases, turning specific days into destinations for different kinds of programs. Much the way NBC used to own Thursdays with its quality comedies and ABC once had a lock on kiddos with its “TGIF” family sitcoms, Netflix has tried to make its unscripted titles stand out by releasing most of them on Wednesdays instead of Fridays. And HBO Max has benefited from the halo of the HBO cable network’s decades-long domination of Sunday nights. Even though time is supposed to be a moot point in the video-on-demand world, millions of HBO Max customers still click into the app on Sunday nights because of the power of the HBO-Sunday brand. When I asked one industry insider whether House of the Dragon was getting a boost from having a reasonable 9 p.m. time slot, he suggested the boost was less about being on earlier in the night and more about streaming on Sundays on an HBO-branded platform. “There’s just so much history there,” he said of the network’s marquee night of programming, which over the decades has hosted everything from The Sopranos to Game of Thrones.

To me, this is another argument in favor of earlier time slots. Rather than dumping its big blockbuster tentpoles on Fridays with everything else in streaming, imagine if Prime Video were to turn Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET into the spot in which the streamer rolled out fresh episodes of TROP, The Boys, Jack Ryan, and other big-budget spectacles that lend themselves to appointment viewing? Similarly, why aren’t HBO Max originals like Hacks, The Flight Attendant, or And Just Like That … debuting on Sundays instead of quietly debuting in the middle of the week? No, they’re not linear shows, which require you to tune in to a channel, but data shows most people who watch House of the Dragon or Succession or Euphoria on Sundays don’t do so via their cable box but via the HBO Max app. It’s not TV that makes people watch these shows on Sundays — it’s the HBO brand.

But while streamers are experimenting with different premiere days and moving toward more episodic releases, any shift toward earlier time slots has been much slower — just a trickle, really. When Disney+ stole Dancing With the Stars away from ABC, it opted to continue airing the show live on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET, the same time it ran on ABC for years, rather than switch to a taped format and announce the eliminated contestant the following week. Prime Video is obviously airing “Thursday Night Football” live in prime time and does the same with new franchise the Academy of Country Music Awards. And Paramount+ has always offered subscribers the ability to stream CBS-branded original series live (via a simulcast of its local CBS affiliate), while Peacock last year began simulcasting NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Outside of live events, however, only a handful of streaming shows premiere in prime time across the U.S. HBO Max subscribers first get access to shows produced by HBO Entertainment (Euphoria, The White Lotus, Succession) at the same time they’re telecast on the HBO cable channel, but everything else — library titles, movies, and series labeled “Max Originals” (Hacks, And Just Like That …, and, yes, the very buzzy The Flight Attendant) — uses the Netflix model: Premiere time is 3 a.m. ET. Disney+ is similarly stingy, even making folks on the West Coast stay up until midnight to catch new episodes of Andor or She-Hulk. Paramount+ and Peacock are also in the early-morning premiere business.

The only streamer seemingly all-in on prime-time premieres? Apple TV+. While most of its titles officially still premiere on Fridays, for more than a year now the streamer has been quietly making episodes of many of its biggest shows available Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. A rep for the company declined to comment on strategy, but an insider at a rival platform theorizes the company sees an upside to going early. “They’re probably trying to get ahead of the releases on other services” on bigger platforms such as Netflix and Prime, he said. And because Apple has kept its marketing message simple (“New episodes each Friday”), the risk of audience confusion is pretty low.

Despite anecdotal evidence that there’s a benefit involved, streaming-industry insiders I’ve talked with don’t share my enthusiasm for the idea of earlier premieres. While Prime moved up the premiere time for the first two episodes of TROP, it went back to its usual midnight-ET release time the next week, in part because that is how almost all of its shows get released but also because the streamer didn’t want to have to compete with its own “Thursday Night Football” franchise. Instead, Prime has been (smartly) using football to repeatedly remind viewers of each week’s episode of TROP. Meanwhile, though HBO Max’s usage spikes when HBO originals premiere on the platform on Sunday nights, a source at the company told me there have been no internal discussions about adapting a prime-time model for HBO Max originals. And an exec at another streamer this week told me he doesn’t see much movement away from the industry norm of dropping episodes around midnight, in part because doing so might make it harder to have a consistent marketing message in countries around the world. “It makes it more confusing if a show premieres on a Thursday in the U.S. but a Friday somewhere else,” the exec explained. “The inconsistency becomes the problem. Audiences don’t know when the show will drop.”

Perhaps that’s true, and certainly if you’re a platform as big as Netflix, trying to schedule your premieres around U.S. viewing times doesn’t make sense, especially if you’re still releasing five, eight, or ten episodes at once. But for streamers that release individual episodes each week, or that don’t yet have a massive global footprint, there’s also a case to be made that what matters more is maximizing buzz. And if earlier launch times in the U.S. may help achieve it, why not start experimenting more and see if it moves the needle?