What should we watch? Part I: Before the TV

The connected world is changing the way we live. In order to offer our clients accurate insights into what’s next, it’s crucial that we understand consumer needs and behaviours, and how they are impacted by digital technology.

Recently at the Nurun Lab, we’ve been studying TV and movie viewing rituals. Never before have we lived in a world with such a complex and diverse media landscape. We have so many more options in every regard – the content, the location, the platform, the time and with whom. Inevitably the obvious question arises: how does a viewer select media content to watch?

To clear up the mess we decided to take a look back at history – which always seems simpler – to compile three comparable consumer journey maps. Our first map delineates the main influences that led people to watch a movie, like Gone with the Wind (1939), in the 1930s.

Over the next week we will post the two subsequent journey maps to present the explosion of the influence of TV in the 1970s and the proliferation of the Internet in the 2010s.…