Keeping Up with the Conversation in the Age of Peak TV

A little show called Game of Thrones had its season premiere this past Sunday, and if you weren’t among the more than 16 million viewers who tuned in live to catch up with the goings-on in Westeros, you’ve probably, at the very least, heard all about it on social media. Aside from garnering more than 2.4 million tweets – the most for any episode of GoT, and potentially for any singular televised drama since Twitter’s inception – the episode also built upon the previous live audience record for the series as well as its network HBO, making it, for the time being, the most popular drama on television.

What helped make the audience for the season 7 premiere grow by 50 percent from the season 6 debut is that in the long break between seasons, the show’s reach had plenty of time to grow. Would-be fans could binge the entire series via digital subscriptions to HBO without needing the cable subscription that in the past had been gatekeeper to all of that network’s content.

But this phenomenon is hardly just fueling the success of Game of Thrones. There is more television on the market and more platforms to access it than ever before. The age of “peak tv” doesn’t just characterize the dearth of options for televised content, but also the heightened quality, as viewers now engage passionately across social media as well as at the office watercooler about their favorite programs.

Keeping up with the conversation, however, can be difficult when viewers are juggling so many options. For starters, viewers this past Sunday night without internet access or a cable subscription could be left shut out while the next morning spoilers are flying around the office. And while viewers can purchase all six seasons of the show in hard copy, this creates digital clutter that can hinder your viewing experience and makes accessing the series unnecessarily challenging.

LINK can help connect all of the dots here. Because LINK can create an LTE hot spot leveraging a user’s cellular data, they can access their HBO Now accounts and catch the show live even if they don’t have access to traditional WiFi. As we discussed in our recent blog, LINK has 2 TB of shareable storage that can be accessed on almost any platform, allowing you to catch up on all past seasons without having to carry your DVD collection and viewing equipment with you.

One inch deep and 2 inches wide, this 2.1 ounce powerhouse allows you to keep Westeros in your back pocket so you never miss an episode.