Does watching the intro to every episode mean something?

Netflix, AppleTV, Hulu, etc., allow you to skip intros. What does this say about the intro quality or the show? Or about us as humans who are always in a hurry. This behavior of skipping intros may reflect our impatience and desire to get to the main content quickly. As a designer of intros, do you get the data on how many people skip your intro? Does it make you want to change it? Why do some shows change each season’s intro and others do not? Budget? How much does it cost to change the intro each season? Is this a metric that is used at all?

Such curious questions.

What we do: We always watch the whole intro of the first episode; it can be a source of insight into the show, somehow set the tone, or even give hints, and then we don’t watch it again until the last episode. But there are exceptions. When the intro is fantastic, the show is an all-time favorite, or it seems an essential part of the show, or maybe it’s because you don’t want the show to end, and you want to watch every second of it. This has been the case for Chefs Table, Game of Thrones, Murders In The Building, Severance, Westworld, and others. 

What about when the intro or trailer is better than the show itself? Maybe the folks making the intro need a raise because they condensed your mediocre show/movie into something good!

I’m talking just about intros, but the same could be said about the credits. How many times do you watch the credits? For me, it’s rare, but when I do, it’s because I want to know where it was filmed, the names of the people who made such an amazing piece of art, or the show was so powerful that you want to absorb every last drop.