
If ‘hold the door’ means anything other than literally holding a door open - then you’ve probably been taking part in the Game of Thrones phenomenon. Although it’s been the most popular TV show of the 21st century, I’ve happily let it pass me by whilst I await the return of Love Island. We all pick TV programmes for different reasons and Thinkbox recently visited us to discuss ‘The Age of Television’, a research study which aimed to discover more about why and how we watch video.
Thinkbox (the marketing body for UK’s TV broadcasters) commissioned a study to analyse the different reasons people watch live TV, broadcaster on-demand TV and subscription services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. As well as looking at why they use online platforms such as YouTube.
The research found that we watch different types of TV to fulfil different viewing needs and that our motivations could be easily categorised into eight different ‘need states’ namely: unwind, distract, do, indulge, escape, experience, in touch & comfort.
Anyone wanting to read the full report can find it here but below I’ve picked out the key findings for each ‘need state’:
All this got me thinking about what I watch and why. Now not only has advertising been ruined by the constant thoughts in my head – why am I being targeted with that, I am not in the target audience so that’s a waste of their social spend? Or is that a TV ad or a Sky Adsmart ad? …THE CONSTANT THOUGHTS! Now I have one more question to add to my mind: what ‘need state’ am I fulfilling by watching Real Housewives? Is it to indulge or distract? … as I never quite manage a full episode I want to say distract as opposed to admitting it is indulge!