Ryan Seacrest predicted that half of Times Square would be fans of South Korean boyband BTS, and judging by the volume of screams heard throughout ABC’s broadcast of “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest,” the BTS ARMY was in full force.
Loyal fans came early to cheer on the group — comprised of members Jimin, Jin, RM, Suga, Jungkook, J Hope, and V (Kim Tae-Hyung, celebrating a day after 24th birthday) — and patiently waited with handmade signs and light sticks to cheer the occasion. All day, the group was prominently displayed on billboards in Times Square as diehards secured spots for the group’s early afternoon rehearsal.
Just before the band took to the stage in front of an estimated one million people, the side of the ABC area was cordoned off, paving a path for the group to make its way safely through the crowd.
Dressed up in black and white for a sharp look, BTS began with the hit “Make It Right” on the red stairs, then worked their way to the big stage for a big finish, “Boy With Luv.”
The band used every opportunity to showcase each member with precise choreography, Jimin stealing a moment when his jacket adorned his head as a hoodie.
Also appearing on the broadcast: headliner Post Malone (in a bright pink, bespoke suit with “2020” emblazoned on the back), who later posed with BTS; country star Sam Hunt, who posed with fans just after his set; and Alanis Morissette, appearing with the Broadway cast of “Jagged Little Pill” and giving network censors a run for their money when Lauren Patten (“Blue Bloods”) dropped an F-bomb during “You Oughta Know.”
Hours before Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Evewith Ryan Seacrest, one would never know BTS was not the main headliner of the event. The group received unprecedented news coverage before the performance. Afterwards, several hashtags about BTS’s appearance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Evewith Ryan Seacresttrended on Twitter.
BTS | Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
The co-hosts of ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ knew BTS would draw in fans
From the moment BTS’s appearance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Evewith Ryan Seacrest was announced, hype began to spread. While ARMY was happy that BTS would be broadcast to millions of people, ABC placed a huge emphasis on BTS’s performance.
Before the New Year’s Eve program, Seacrest said he expected half of attendees to be BTS fans.
“We don’t even know what to expect in Times Square with all the people because when they show up, all of their fans show up, so half of Times Square could be BTS fans,” he said.
On Good Morning America, Seacrest’s co-host Lucy Hale seconded that BTS was guaranteed to bring in a lot of fans.
“We have Sam Hunt, Post Malone, BTS — which is going to be insanity,” she said. About BTS, she added, “I don’t even know what to expect. I feel like they would draw a million people alone.”
BTS was not the main headliner for ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’
On Dec. 17, the lineup for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacreast was announced. In the original press release, Post Malone was advertised as the main headliner of the event.
The introduction read: “POST MALONE TO HEADLINE AMERICA’S MOST WATCHED NEW YEAR’S EVE SPECIAL.”
“Making his Times Square debut, Post Malone will be joined by additional performers BTS, Sam Hunt and Alanis Morissette, performing for the first time with the cast of the hit Broadway musical ‘Jagged Little Pill’ for America’s biggest celebration of the year,” the press release continued.
Hunt performed from 9:38 p.m. to 9:44 p.m. Both Morissette and BTS received eight minutes of performance time. Morissette performed from 8:33 p.m. to 8:41 p.m. and BTS performed from 10:38 p.m. to 10:46 p.m.
Post Malone performed the closest to midnight and also performed for eight minutes. He closed the evening and performed from 11:38 p.m. to 11:46 p.m.
BTS received unprecedented news coverage
While Post Malone was the main headliner of the event, BTS’s performance received the most news coverage. In addition to Seacrest and Hale discussing the crowds BTS inevitably draws, news stations interviewed fans who camped out for the performance.
“We’ve covered this event, the preparations for many years now,” said one news anchor for NBC New York. “We’ve never seen anything like this… Hundreds of people are already here… big fans of the Korean boy band BTS.”
The day of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Evewith Ryan Seacrest, several different media personalities including Seacrest filmed BTS’s rehearsal for social media. With this, BTS effectively became legends at the event before their performance even began.
The group performed two songs
On Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest, BTS performed two songs from their 2019 EP, Map of the Soul: Persona. The group opened their two-song set with “Make It Right.”
For the first time ever, the song included choreography. The BTS members moved from the iconic Time’s Square Red Steps and walked past the barricades in the crowd to the main stage.
BTS then performed their hit song “Boy With Luv.” Despite the cold weather, the members of BTS showed their dedication to putting on a good performance as well as their individual charisma. At one point during the performance, Jimin accidentally threw his jacket over his head and smiled at the camera.
BTS had a successful 2019
The press release for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest referenced BTS as a “global phenomenon.” While BTS is considered a phenomenon, it’s clear from their 2019 that the group is not a fad.
Wired recently named BTS as one of the best artists of the decade. Not just of 2019, of the entire decade. The group won every award they were nominated for at the American Music Awards in 2019, and took home two Billboard Music Awards. They became the first artists in 2019 to sell 4 million album copies worldwide, and they had the highest-grossing tour of May 2019.
The group has fans that provide unconditional support because of their artistry and message, and they have steadily grown in popularity since their 2013 debut. Their presence at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest dominated headlines. Going into 2020, it’s clear people are paying attention to whatever BTS does next.
The Witcher has everything it needs to be Netflix’s next success: popular source material, a massive marketing campaign, a well-received performance by Henry Cavill, and an iconic meme in the form of the hit song “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher.” Yet, while certainly popular, it doesn’t seem like The Witcher is going to become “must see” television like other recent hits, such as The Mandalorian on Disney+ or Watchmen on HBO. At least part of the reason why is how Netflix released it: in a single, all-you-can-eat drop — like almost all of its other shows — instead of a more traditional weekly rollout.
Weekly releases have numerous benefits for fans: continued and focused conversation every week around the latest episode, a chance to digest and process events, and fewer demands on viewers’ time upfront.
By dropping every episode at once, Netflix is sacrificing weekly discussions around The Witcher for a short burst of popularity, after which it trickles off into the void as people’s attentions are quickly grabbed by the next big thing. That extra time between episodes would let viewership build over time, as more people hear about the show or proselytize it to their friends.
Compare that to a weekly release, like The Mandalorian, which captured a burst of attention with each new Baby Yoda GIF, or the weeklong discussions and theorizing that would fill the time between episodes of Watchmen. Not everyone may have been on board with The Mandalorian at first, but when everyone else on the internet started talking about it and sharing GIFs, they may have been willing to give it a shot.
Weekly releases (at reasonable hours) also transform streaming shows into the kind of appointment television that viewers flock to and watch together, reacting in real time. The weekly release schedule means everyone is roughly at the same place in the series; for the most part, no one is confused about why the song from the bard is a big deal because they haven’t gotten up to that episode yet.
A weekly release also makes it less of a slog to actually watch a show. Give someone one episode, with the promise of more, and you’ve given them something to look forward to without demanding too much time upfront. Netflix dumps hours of content on viewers at once, demanding that they watch it all in a binge session that the site used to be famous for.
It’s not that The Witcher isn’t popular, either: at least one data firm says it’s more popular than The Mandalorian, at least for its first weekend debut, per Business Insider. But even if that number is correct, it’s just a single week, compared to the months that The Mandalorian dominated the conversation. How long can The Witcher keep that success going with no new episodes to drive viewers back and plenty of other new content waiting in their queues?
None of this is to say that Netflix’s traditional “dump it all in a single day” strategy isn’t always effective. Some of its original series — the three seasons of Stranger Things, for example, The Umbrella Academy, or any of the various Marvel shows it used to make — are filmed and designed as what amounts to a single 10-or-so-hour-long movie that just happens to have convenient episode breaks. While weekly releases still might make more sense, at least from a mindshare perspective, the release strategy there is at least understandable given the nature of the content.
There was a time when Netflix’s approach was seen as a breath of fresh air, especially compared to the bloated, 24-episode and months-long seasons that dominated traditional broadcast. Netflix’s strategy killed the cruft, and promised an almost cinematic-like experience where the entire show hit at once. But hours-long TV show seasons aren’t movies, and trying to force episodic stories into a cinematic box just doesn’t work.
Even among Netflix’s shows, though, The Witcher in particular feels designed for a weekly release, given the literal “monster-of-the-week” style plotting that (at least for part of the season) sees Geralt go somewhere and fight something in fairly self-contained chunks. Add in the twisting timelines and developing storylines, and you’ve got a show that’s almost tailor-made for today’s Game of Thrones / Westworld / Watchmen-style cottage industry that loves to theorize and debate over shows. It’s hard to have a Witcher podcast series, for example, when all the discussion happens over the course of a weekend.
Game of Thrones style juggernauts are few and far between, even as more and more companies try to hit whatever magic combination of popularity and quality makes a show so hyped. Not every show will be the next Game of Thrones or Mandalorian — take Apple TV Plus’ See, which had a weekly release, huge budget, and star-studded cast but still flopped by virtue of not being very good.
The Witcher probably won’t be the next Game of Thrones. It’s probable that no show ever will be: the success of Thrones looks increasingly like a once-in-a-generation type of occasion. But Netflix’s release strategy isn’t giving its best shows the chance to even try, with the service choosing to burn off all its content in a single shot instead of a slower burn that could see it rise to greater heights.
Peter Morgan's third season will be up for best television drama series at next week's coveted Hollywood awards ceremony, while Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies - who have taken over as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh - are up for best actress and actor respectively.
Helena Bonham Carter rounds off the show's nominations with a nod in the best supporting actress category for playing Princess Margaret.
Netflix's top 10 most popular releases of 2019 in the UK
The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
6 Underground
Murder Mystery
The Witcher
The Irishman
After Life
Stranger Things 3
Our Planet
Sex Education
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes: Limited Series
The list is thought to be based on the number of UK accounts that have watched at least two minutes of a title during its first 28 days on release this year. Netflix does not usually release exact numbers.
But in July, the streamer did release the figures for the third instalment of Stranger Things after it broke the service's record, with more than 40 million households around the world watching the show in its first four days.
Ricky Gervais's latest effort After Life appeared to have had more enduring appeal in the UK, listed as the second most popular series release this year behind US fantasy show The Witcher.
Responding to the news, Gervais wrote on Twitter that he "still can't quite believe" his show, about the emotional journey of a grieving husband and journalist, beat the latest edition of Millie Bobby Brown and co's slick sci-fi horror series and US psychological thriller show You.
Netflix's top 10 most popular series releases of 2019 in the UK
Director J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has taken a lot of heat from fans since its December 20th release. Viewers have picked apart the entry for a number of different reasons, but the lack of screen time for Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico was one of the more surprising developments in the film. So why did Abrams decide to reduce Tran’s involvement, despite teasing that she was going to play a big role in the Star Wars franchise?
‘Star Wars’ star Kelly Marie Tran | Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Tran gets bashed on social media
After the release of Star
Wars; The Last Jedi, Tran received a lot of backlash on social media in
regard to her character’s role in the movie.
The actress was harassed so much that she was forced to shut
down all of her social media accounts. Some of her co-stars even spoke out in
support of her, which goes to show how much it was affecting everyone.
Given her prominence in The Last Jedi, Tran’s character was clearly going to play an important part in the events in The Rise of Skywalker. Only that did not happen.
Somewhere in the development of the last Star Wars,
Abrams decided to significantly reduce Tran’s part, which has not gone over
well with fans. Abrams has not discussed why Tran did not appear more in the
movie, but it may have had something to do with the previous backlash.
How much screen time did Tran get?
After enjoying a bunch of screen time in Star Wars:The Last Jedi, Tran’s character barely
appeared at all in The Rise of Skywalker.
According to We
Got This Covered, Rose only had a whopping 76 seconds of screen time in the
film.
The character first appears at the very beginning of the movie when everyone is getting ready to leave the planet, Pasanna. Finn (John Boyega) is shown telling Rose that she is supposed to stay behind.
Rose is pretty much absent from the rest of the last movie
in the Star Wars saga. She later pops up during a battle between the
Resistance and the First Order, but her scene is very small.
The lack of screen time has been heavily criticized, and
some fans view it as validation for all the hate the actress received for The Last Jedi. While we would have loved
to see Rose in more scenes, she may have had a more prominent role in the
original plan.
Was Tran supposed to get a bigger role?
A previous cut of Star Wars reportedly shows Rose in
a much larger capacity than what fans watched in theaters.
In a recent interview, Tran revealed that she was looking forward to seeing her character and Daisy Ridley’s Ray in an epic scene together, which was mysteriously absent from the final cut of Star Wars.
“I think it’s really cool at all that they are even in
scenes together because in Jedi we weren’t in any scenes together,” Tran
shared. “It was really cool to have feminine energy on set. I wish I could tell
you more but I’m really excited for people to see [Rose and Rey] interact. They
both have the same objective which is to fight for the things you believe in
and the people you love.
The interview came right after Tran watched an early
screening of the movie, which apparently contained the scene in question. But
in the theatrical release of Star Wars:The Rise of Skywalker, Abrams cut the scene between Tran and Ridley
altogether.
We have no idea what the scene entailed, but it is a shame
that it was removed. Hopefully, it is included when the movie is released on
DVD.
Star Wars fans speak out
So far, The Rise of Skywalker has been met with mixed reviews from Star Wars fans across the globe. The same holds true for the lack of screen time for Tran’s character.
Some fans were really looking forward to seeing what Abrams
had in store for Rose, while others were happy with the decision to cut her
from the action.
Taking to Twitter, fans expressed their varying views on the
subject. The discussion has led to the creation of the hashtag, #RoseTicoDeservedBetter,
though not everyone is on board with the movement.
One fan even shared a photo of a bunch of Rose action
figures on a clearance rack at a store as a way to prove that the character is
not that popular with fans.
Whatever the case, it will be interesting to hear what
Abrams has to say about why he choose to cut Tran’s scenes. In the meantime,
fans can watch Star Wars: The Rise of
Skywalker in theaters.
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