Predicting streaming audiences for a channel’s on-demand TV shows: Discerning the influences of choice architecture, consumer agency, and content attributes

Abstract

Contemporary corporate discourse asserts that viewers have a high degree of control over what they watch on video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, echoing early academic assumptions about online users’ autonomy. Such beliefs are now being interrogated, an endeavour this study continues by analysing data on the consumption and characteristics of television programmes viewed on a channel’s VOD service and – for comparison – via its linear broadcast. Crucially, our analysis incorporates characteristics – like programmes’ prominence on the channel’s VOD interface – that represent how platforms seek to steer users’ attention. Our analysis also incorporates other programme characteristics, like genre – which serves as a proxy for the deliberate viewing choices users make. Our results lend empirical weight to ideas about the limits of online users’ agency. This study is also of relevance to television scholars and executives who are interested in the specific predictors of television programmes’ success, both on VOD platforms and on linear television.