Television Marathon
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A marathon is an event in which viewers or readers engage many hours' worth of media (film, television, books, YouTube videos etc.) in a condensed time period. This phrase represents a two-fold shift from
binge-watch Binge-watching (also called binge-viewing) is the practice of watching entertainment or informational content for a prolonged time span, usually a single television show. Statistics Binge-watching overlaps with marathon viewing which places mo ...
in that it incorporates other media (not just television) and it reduces the negative connotations associated with bingeing. In the 2014 book ''Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality,'' Lisa Perks describes media marathoning as a "comprehensive and complimentary phrase" that "connotes a conjoined triumph of commitment and stamina. This phrase also captures viewers' or readers' engrossment, effort, and sense of accomplishment surrounding their media interaction." Netflix executive Todd Yellin is quoted as saying "I don't like the term 'binge,' because it sounds almost pathological. 'Marathon' sounds more celebratory." Media marathons can be organized around particular series, particular artists (e.g.,
Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynam ...
or Hitchcock), or genres (e.g.,
horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
s or chick flicks). Marathons can be user-created: one person decides to undertake a marathon solo or to organize a group marathon. Marathons may also be producer-created. Producer-created marathons are usually orchestrated by movie theaters, fan sites, or by cable channels that show already-run seasons, and, more recently, with original first-run programming through streaming services (such as Netflix's ''House of Cards''). In television, a marathon is an extension of the concept of block programming.


Reasons

The most common reasons for a network to run a marathon are: # to celebrate the acquisition of a series, # to commemorate the loss of rights to a series # to lead into a highly anticipated episode of a series (such as a return from a hiatus or a
series finale A series finale is the final installment of an episodic entertainment series, most often a television series. It may also refer to a final theatrical sequel, the last part of a television miniseries, the last installment of a literary series, or ...
), # likewise to allow viewers to catch up on a series before a season finale, # to honor the retirement or death of a person associated with the series (this is particularly popular on networks that specialize in reruns), # to mark a milestone associated with that series (such as the anniversary of its premiere, or reaching a certain number of episodes) # to celebrate (or to take advantage of additional viewers on) a
holiday A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work including school, are suspended or reduced. Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate an event or tra ...
, especially with holiday-themed episodes, # to burn off a contract for a television series that has proved unprofitable, # to signal the end of a channel format and/or the start of a new one, # or to inexpensively counterprogram against more popular programs such as the
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
, Marathons are attractive to genre movie fans, or families that like watching their favourite movies/TV shows in blocks at a time.


History

Japanese
manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
magazine '' Weekly Shōnen Jump'' developed a successful formula of publishing individual manga chapters and then compiling them into separate standalone tankōbon volumes that could be "binged" all at once. This ''Jump'' formula produced major Japanese pop culture hits such as ''
Dragon Ball is a Japanese media franchise created by Akira Toriyama in 1984. The Dragon Ball (manga), initial manga, written and illustrated by Toriyama, was serialized in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from 1984 to 1995, with the 519 individual chapters colle ...
'' (1984 debut), '' One Piece'' (1997 debut) and '' Naruto'' (1999 debut). According to Matt Alt of '' The New Yorker'', "''Jump'' presaged the way the world consumes streaming entertainment today." Marathon viewing sessions of Japanese anime television series have been a common trend in anime fandom for decades, dating back to the late 1970s to 1980s. According to an early American anime cosplayer, Karen Schnaubelt, Japanese anime were "incredibly difficult to come by" with "nothing available except broadcast TV until" VHS videotapes became commonly available in the late 1970s, allowing fans to import anime shows from Japan; she noted that a friend "would record the episodes" and then "a group of us would gather at his apartment and watch a marathon of the episodes." At
comic conventions A comic book convention or comic-con is an event with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at co ...
and
sci-fi conventions Science fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of the speculative fiction genre, science fiction. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expre ...
in the 1980s, fans brought video tapes to hold marathon anime screenings; BayCon 1986, for example, held an 80-hour long anime marathon. On broadcast TV, the first TV marathons aired on Nickelodeon's
Nick at Nite Nick at Nite (stylized as nick@nite) is an American nighttime basic cable television channel that broadcasts over the channel space of Nickelodeon. It typically broadcasts Mondays to Thursday nights from 9 p.m. - 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time Zone, ET/Pac ...
, on July 1, 1985, presenting multiple episodes from ''Donna Reed'' and ''Route 66''. The idea by Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert was based on a similar concept that radio stations used, in which songs by one particular artist would be played for a prolonged period of time. While early marathons were rare and special, in modern time it is common for some networks to air a television series in three- to four-hour blocks, sometimes on a daily basis, mainly to appeal to and compete with subscription video-on-demand services (such as
Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
and Netflix) that have enabled voluntary " binge-watching" of television series. Almost all marathons primarily feature reruns of episodes already previously broadcast, although one may be used to lead into the premiere of a new episode. To compete with the typical practice of streaming services releasing entire seasons of original productions all at once, TBS premiered the entire first season of '' Angie Tribeca'' as a marathon, running the 10 episodes on a loop for 25 hours. In a few cases, especially with classic television,
lost episode Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect. Common reasons for loss A significant prop ...
s, originally unseen television pilots, and other programming that may not have been seen during the show's original run may be included. Marathons have proven to be a viable way of rerunning reality television contests, which have otherwise been relatively difficult to rerun in traditional forms (e.g. daily "strip" syndication) because of the loss of the element of surprise. In December 2012, MTV announced that it would air a seven-day (168-hour) marathon of ''
Jersey Shore The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Po ...
'' before the series finale on December 20, 2012; this marked one of the longest marathons in television history. It has been speculated in the early 2010s that marathon television viewing or binge-watching, usually done on-demand by ordering a whole season of episodes of a television series on a service such as Netflix, is increasing in popularity.
Infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...
blocks are generally not considered marathons beyond jocular mentions of such for networks such as CNBC which program heavy infomercial schedules on weekends or financially struggling stations which schedule them in high-profile time periods. Perks attributes the contemporary marathoning trend to three factors: advances in content-delivery technologies, active audience behaviors, and increasing complexity of storytelling. On June 25, 2015, Comedy Central announced that it would stream a marathon online of every episode of '' The Daily Show'' hosted by
Jon Stewart Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, political commentator, and television host. He hosted ''The Daily Show'', a satirical news program on Comedy Central, from 1999 to 2015 and now hosts ''Th ...
, known as "Your Month of Zen", running between June 26 and August 6, 2015, in honor of his retirement.


Length

Researchers have operationally defined media marathoning and binge-watching in different ways. Perks provides medium-specific definitions. Marathoners must have "viewed a television season in a week or less, watched three or more films from the same series in a week or less, or read three or more books from the same series in a month or less". A Netflix-commissioned study defined "binge-watching" as viewing 2 to 6 episodes of the same show in one sitting. A 2014 TiVo survey defined binge-watching as watching 3 or more episodes of the same show in one day. In extreme media marathons, such as the Simpsons Marathon (which lasted 86 hours and 37 minutes), the viewing time can last an exceptionally long time. A marathon generally has to have at least five episodes in a row to be considered as such; as writer Patrick Hipes noted, "some networks (promote) 3–4 episodes as a 'marathon,' but that's more like a 5K." Some of the longest-running marathons are the two '' Twilight Zone'' marathons that air on
Syfy Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Lau ...
in the United States on
New Year's Day New Year's Day is a festival observed in most of the world on 1 January, the first day of the year in the modern Gregorian calendar. 1 January is also New Year's Day on the Julian calendar, but this is not the same day as the Gregorian one. Wh ...
and
Independence Day An independence day is an annual event commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or more rarely after the end of a military occupation. Man ...
; not counting early-morning
infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...
s, each run for roughly three days straight. Holidays are a common time for marathons; for instance, on Thanksgiving in 2010, over 40 cable networks aired marathons of various lengths. For a time, the longest continuous marathon in the history of television was a twelve-day marathon of '' The Simpsons'' that aired on FXX, which aired non-stop from August 21, 2014 until September 2, 2014. The marathon featured the first 552 episodes of the series (every single episode that had already been released at the time) aired chronologically, including ''
The Simpsons Movie ''The Simpsons Movie'' is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the long-running animated sitcom ''The Simpsons''. The film was directed by the show's supervising director David Silverman and stars the show's regular cast of Dan Caste ...
'', which FX Networks had already owned the rights to air. The first day of the marathon was the highest-rated broadcast day in the history of the network so far, the ratings more than tripled those of regular prime-time programming for FXX. Ratings during the first six nights of the marathon grew night after night, with the network ranking within the top 5 networks in basic cable each night. The record was surpassed in 2015 by VH1 Classic, which broadcast a nineteen-day marathon of '' Saturday Night Live'' from January 28 to February 15, in honour of the program's 40th season (with its end date coinciding with the 40th-anniversary special episode on NBC). The marathon primarily featured the series' most notable episodes in a reverse chronological order (beginning with season 39 and concluding with its October 11, 1975 series premiere), along with blocks focusing on specific celebrities (such as
Eddie Murphy Edward Regan Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and singer. He rose to fame on the sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'', for which he was a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984. Murphy has als ...
and
Justin Timberlake Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 88 million records. Timberlake is the recipient of numerous awards and ac ...
), a block of the program's retrospective episodes on February 15, as well as Saturday-night airings of films featuring alumni of the series (such as ''
Black Sheep In the English language, black sheep is an idiom that describes a member of a group who is different from the rest, especially a family member who does not fit in. The term stems from sheep whose fleece is colored black rather than the more comm ...
'' and'' Wayne's World'').


Venue

Movie marathons may be hosted in a private residence or in movie theaters. One guide for hosting them notes that viewers should be able to come and go as they please.


Food

Some marathons offer story-specific food choices, such as lembas and butterbeer.
Popcorn Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated; the same names also refer to the foodstuff produced by the expansion. A popcorn kernel's strong hull contains the se ...
is considered a staple for movie marathons. Some people prefer to provide multiple flavors of popcorn, while others prefer to provide plain popcorn and flavoring separate so that participants can flavor it themselves.


See also

* Binge-watching * Doubleheader (television) * Omnibus (broadcast) * Telethon


References

{{Reflist, 2 Television terminology * Entertainment events