Daily Report: Streaming Video Is Developing Into Distinct Genre

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“Is Netflix TV?”

That is the question James Poniewozik says he asked himself when watching the “Sense8″ series on Netflix. It’s a good question because, as he points out, the rise of the binge watching of streaming shows is making us reconsider how we think of programming that we get through our TVs and other digital devices.

Original streaming shows like those offered by Netflix and Amazon, he argues, are different from TV series as we know them. “They’re becoming a distinct genre all their own, whose conventions and aesthetics we’re just starting to figure out,” he writes.

Like a novel? A video game? Streaming video seems like a mix of many things. Perhaps the real question is: Will companies like Netflix be willing to pay to continue the experiments?