In 2009 Norwegian broadcaster NRK decided to do something different. It put a camera on a train and broadcast a seven-hour trip from Oslo to Bergen, interweaving archive footage to liven up the programme. The show was a success with 1.2 million viewers and thus was born the Slow TV.
Rune Moklebust and Thomas Hellum, the brains behind the train video, have helped churn out a slew of luxuriously long films since then, the mashable reported.
In 2013, the network aired a 12-hour programme on firewood. It attracted nearly a million people — about 20 per cent of Norway’s population. Four hours of the programme included produced content, while the remaining eight showed a fireplace live.
A 13-hour broadcast called National Knitting Night opened with scenes of shearing sheep and closed with people knitting sweaters. An 18-hour long broadcasted called Salmon Swimming Upstream featured precisely what the title promised. Then there was a five-and-a-half-day-long cruise along Norway’s coast.
When asked if there was a recipe for the perfect ‘Slow TV’ Hellum said: “It’s important that it’s an unbroken timeline, that you don’t take away anything. It’s all the boring stuff in there, all the exciting things in there, so you as a viewer have to find out what’s boring and what’s interesting.”However, sometimes slow can be very slow. NRK suspended a show on migratory reindeer because the animals stopped moving.
