Tuesday - January 21, 2020

Slow TV

And you thought there was nothing on TV. Up In Norway, Really Boring Is Really Popular.

Norway: New Hit TV Show Where One Episode Runs 9 Solid Days

Slow TV to feature Svalbard round the clock for nine days

Fascinating viewers for hours and days, the Norwegian slow TV concept takes it to the ultimate with the longest ever program starting on January 31st.

«Svalbard minute by minute» was recorded last August and can be viewed on the national broadcaster’s NRK2 channel from January 31 at 18.00 to midnight on February 9.

NRK launched the idea of slow TV on the 100th anniversary of Bergensbanen, the railway from Oslo to Bergen in 2009. With cameras in front, inside, on the sides and along the route, the entire 7 hours 16 minutes journey became a big hit with 1,2 million Norwegians tuned in to the show (Norway has a population of 5 million).

The success was followed up by the Flåmsbana (Flåm railway) minute by minute in 2010 and the big hit «Hurtigruten minute by minute» in 2011 on board a cruise vessel sailing all along the coast from Bergen to Kirkenes, a voyage and TV show lasting almost seven days.

In 2012, Nordlandbanen, the railway between Trondheim and Bodø across the Arctic Circle was recorded for 9 hours and 50 minutes and was followed by 1,2 million viewers.

So, my question is, are these shows just background noise, or is life so slow that Norwegians actually veg out and watch this stuff all day all night for days on end?

Is this some kind of escapist, alternate reality, life in the Matrix kind of thing? Or are they all so stressed out by the already slow pace of living there that they need to immerse themselves in the utterly dull and boring? Maybe they’re all stoned out of their minds most of the time.

Nearly 1 out of 4 Norwegians are huge fans of this kind of show. What does that say about them? (Yeah, it’s bloody cold, and dark, and it’s cold and dark for months and months at a go. And you can only have so much sex or football.)

Most of Svalbard is Arctic wilderness and about 65% of the land area is protected as national parks.

Project manager with NRK, Thomas Hellum, names the Svalbard slow TV as the ultimate production so far.

«We believe everyone in one or another way has a dream-relationship to Svalbard. A voyage is for many unachievable, but here everyone can join from the sofa,» Hellum says in an NRK article about the program.

Yes, a dream relationship with some empty islands way the heck up in the Arctic. A place of even more dark and cold than regular Norway. Frozen tundra, icebergs, and one filthy Russian coal mine doing it’s best to pollute the place. About the only fun thing that ever happens is when a eco-warrior ship full of greenies hell bent on exploring the ravages of global warming gets stuck in the ice pack that they don’t believe exists.

This is not the first time a ship carrying climate change activists has run into trouble in polar ice floes. In the CNN video below, a ten thousand ton Chinese icebreaker, the Snow Dragon, became trapped by antarctic ice on its way to rescue a Russian vessel, the Academic Shokalskiy. The ship was carrying a team of global warming scientists and had become stuck in the ice floes several days earlier. The team’s mission?  To gauge the effects of climate change on the region.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2020 at 08:08 AM   
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