Steven Weber

has found a whole new audience in the role of Dr. Dean Archer in Chicago Med

, and being part of a big network show is something the actor knows many others in the industry would kill to do. That is probably because network shows provide something that the “binge-watch” culture of Netflix doesn’t: a sense of community. For Weber, that feeling of being able to gather together and share experiences is being lost with today’s streaming culture.
During an exclusive interview with MovieWeb’s George Edelman, the industry veteran explained how he feels that the convenience of having whole shows on demand is leading to a kind of isolation that was not there 20 – 30 years ago. He said:

“I speak with my fellow actors, Oliver Platt and Epatha Merkerson, and we refer to those days as the before time when there was still appointment TV and people were more inclined to gather in a large kind of spread out collective at 8pm to watch Wings or Friends or whatever show, and I actually think that the advent of recent technology, the loss of that experience is not a good thing.

Yes, there are advantages to being able to binge The White Lotus and The Pitt, which is a great show. However, the communal, kind of collective experience of everybody seeing a fantastic episode of a beloved show is lost and I think that is registering in our society. It’s creating a lot of compartmentalization and isolation in a way, again, for convenience sake.”

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Binge-Watching Creates Many Problems

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Pioneered by Netflix more than any other streaming platform, the binge-watch model of release has seen all episodes of some of the biggest shows being dumped in front of viewers in one go. This has been welcomed by those with ample time on their hands to blast through eight hours of TV in one go, and was a godsend during the Covid pandemic, when a lot of people actually did have nothing to do but watch TV while confined to their homes.
However, as time has gone on, it has become clear that there are some big downsides to the model. With a binge-watch release, there is no motivation for people to stick with, or come back to a platform once they have watched the series they want to watch. There is also the issue of being required to make new content constantly to make up for a lack of new weekly drops. This, in many ways, has led to saturated shows, which are thrown together so quickly that quality dips, viewers abandon them a few episodes in, and they get canceled almost as soon as they are created.
Add into the mix the kind of disconnection that Weber alludes to, and it is clear that while there is a place for binge-TV, there is also a big place for old-school network TV shows too. With series like NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, The Pitt, and the many strands of One Chicago pulling in strong viewership with an older style weekly release plan, it looks like there is hope for more linear TV offerings to continue to sit alongside binge releases in the future.

Chicago Med

Release Date

November 17, 2015

Network

NBC

Directors

Michael Waxman, Michael Pressman, Charles S. Carroll, Milena Govich, Anna Dokoza, Bethany Rooney, Fred Berner, Tess Malone, Mykelti Williamson, SJ Main Muñoz, Donald Petrie, Martha Mitchell, Vincent Misiano, Timothy Busfield, Jonathan Brown, John Polson, Stephen Cragg, Anthony Nardolillo, Michael Berry, David Rodriguez, Afia Nathaniel, Oz Scott, Valerie Weiss, Gonzalo Amat

Writers

Joseph Sousa, Lily Dahl, Natalie Drayer, Darin Goldberg, Shelley Meals, Melissa R. Byer, Treena Hancock, Mary Leah Sutton, Simran Baidwan, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Jason Cho, Will Pascoe, Liz Brixius

Marlyne Barrett

Maggie Lockwood

S. Epatha Merkerson

Sharon Goodwin

Nick Gehlfuss

Dr. Will Halstead