'I Can Watch What I Want'

In recent years, on-demand video services, such as Netflix and Amazon Video, have become extremely popular. To understand how people use these services, we recruited 20 people from nine households to keep a viewing diary for 14 days. To better understand these household viewing diaries, in-depth interviews were conducted. We found that people took advantage of the freedom and choice that on-demand services offer, watching on different devices and in different locations, both in the home and outside. People often watched alone so they could watch what they wanted, rather than coming together to watch something of mutual interest. Despite this flexibility, the evening prime time continued to be the most popular time for people to watch on-demand content. Sometimes they watched for extended periods, and during interviews concerns were expressed about how on-demand services make it far too easy to watch too much and that this is often undesirable.