I'm in Tromsø, in Norway, in the Arctic Circle,
And this beautiful thing here;
is one of the boats that plies the Hurtigruten,
and I am probably mispronouncing that.
But the fast route from down in the south-west of Norway,
all the way to here in the Arctic Circle.
And I say fast route, it takes seven days.
But here is something you might not know,
this is an excellent example of slow television.
Something that the NRK, the National Broadcaster,
the equivalent of the BBC or PBS, excels at.
In 2011 they took a load of cameras and just attached them
to this boat and broadcast its journey 24 hours a day
as it went up. Well not specifically this boat,
one very much like it.
Also, because they did it in the middle of summer and it was not
a freezing cold mid-afternoon -
-- it's about 2:30 as I record this --
It was beautiful all the way.
Norwegan fjords, gorgeous sun, well if you want to see it
fortunately they released all the footage through Creative Commons,
so there's some interesting mashups here on YouTube
if you don't want to wait the full 134 hours.
But people did. Here's the strange thing: people did watch this.
Maybe just for a few minutes, maybe for a few hours,
maybe they just kept it on the television all the time,
in the same way as they kept on the train that stayed for 24 hours
thorough Norway or the log fire
that simply burned. Slow television is an antidote to the
reality TV show and the fast cut editing of today.
And is it massively popular?
Well, no, of course not, that's why you're watching
2 minute videos on YouTube rather than 134 hours
of footage of a boat, but
don't rule it out because its surprising how many people will just tune in for a little while,
to something calming and pleasant and slow
And that is something you might not have known.
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