Deep-engagement television evolved serialized narratives requiring total episode commitment

Evidence

To make things not for grazing but for deep engagement required a new set of narrative strategies, though it was possible to make such television at various levels of quality and sophistication, depending on what the viewer sought. So it had been, too, with the new idiom’s progenitors, feature film and even the Victorian novel. While House of Cards might have made binging mainstream, in the decade before, writers of shows were inventing what Vince Gilligan (of Breaking Bad) termed the “hyperserial.” Unlike the dramatic series of old, this kind made sense only to those who committed to every episode and indeed multiple seasons of viewing. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1110

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Vince Gilligan’s coinage ‘hyperserial’ — a serial that only makes sense to viewers committed across episodes and seasons.
• XREF: The hyperserial’s gated commitment structure parallels gated/impersonal trust dynamics from the Milgrom and diamond-trade readings; also akin to the deep-attention alternative reality discussed in earlier chapters. — connects to: Binge watching is deep engagement, the opposite of channel surfing — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1099; Ongoing serial engagement produces deeper social learning than brief media exposure — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2831; Early plotted TV shows reset eternally, while hyperserials carry ongoing consequences — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1111 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Ongoing serial engagement produces deeper social learning than brief media exposure #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2831