Should Starz continue Outlander season 4 early-release strategy?

One of the things that has become somewhat indicative of Starz over the years when it comes to all of their programming (including Outlander) is pretty simple — they don’t wait until their shows air to make them available online. New episodes of the Starz series air Sunday nights, but there is no hard-and-fast rule that you have to wait for that long. So long as you have Starz On-Demand or the app, you can watch the episodes starting at midnight the day they come out.

When Starz first introduced this idea years ago for their shows, it was a risky move. We are still in this era where so many networks live-and-die by live+same-day Nielsen ratings. These are the ones that are reported often by sites like this one, and they are also often used as the main litmus test for a show’s success. Do they still matter? Sure, but mostly for broadcast and basic-cable entities who need advertisers. For premium networks, they are mere window dressing — yet, HBO and Showtime have hesitated to make a move to offer episodes early. They still like the press releases that boast big numbers because of viewers watching their shows in their original air time.

What Starz has done is basically thumb their nose at some of how networks traditionally do things. They realize that Nielsen ratings don’t dictate whether or not their shows return for additional seasons. Their subscribers do. If they see commerce coming in for a series, they’ll renew it. Is there often a correlation between ratings and subscribers? Sure, but not always. Showtime proved that with Twin Peaks. 

We do know that this early-release strategy for a show like Outlander does carry with it a very clear set of drawbacks, starting with the fact that you run a pretty substantial  risk that viewers on social media are going to be spoiled about episodes before they air. Even today, we imagine that there are some casual Outlander watchers simply unaware that there is another option other than Starz. This is one of the reasons why we don’t publish reviews until after the episodes wrap on the network.

Will Starz ever change their early-release strategy?

Hopefully not, since there really are no other drawbacks for them other than spoilers. It makes them stand out, it benefits a show like Outlander with a diehard base, and it encourages multiplatform viewing. In some ways, Starz is thinking like a television network for the modern era more so than anyone else. The longer this tradition holds, the more it will benefit them.

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