Five-hour ‘slow TV’ knitting show to air in Norway (En)
Digital Journal reported on the relaxing and warming show of a crackling fire being built and maintained for 12 solid hours. According to NRK (Norway’s state television channel). that show was covered by the BBC in the UK and other networks worldwide.
NRK also had a show which broadcast 130 hours of a cruise ship sailing up the Norwegian coast to the Arctic.
Now for the latest in what NRK calls “slow but noble television”, the television channel hopes to beat the world’s knitting record in the “from sheep to sweater” category.
The show is slotted to start at 7.30pm on November 1 and is expected to continue until past midnight.
The show’s producer Lise-May Spissøy told NRK, “We have already earmarked the lamb to be shorn, and started to put together the team of eight people who will be trying to break the knitting record: one to shear, while the seven remaining must spin and knit as fast as they can.”
Apparently a record of four hours and fifty-one seconds was set by an Australian TV knitting team, and the knitters on NRK are trying to beat that.
According to Arve Hjelseth, a sociologist at the Norwegian University of Science, Norwegians “love slow,” and he explained to the Wall Street Journal that watching slow TV is a “sort of celebration of the Norwegian way of doing things, which we believe to be slightly different.”
Rune Moklebust, in charge of slow TV programming at NRK, told Time that “this is a different way of telling a story. It is more strange. The more wrong it gets, the more right it is”.
Kristian Elster, a journalist who works in NRK’s international affairs department, told The Local, “You would think it’s boring television, but we have quite a good ratings for these programmes, so obviously there’s an audience for it.”
Reportedly Elster has a passion for knitting, and he uses the skill to kill time on assignments. Elster will be featuring in a short, four-minute slot during the evening. He even gave an example of how knitting can be useful:
“To give you an example, I was in France last year covering the presidential election, and I was knitting in a cafe during my lunch break, and that made a woman who worked in real estate start talking to me and I ended up doing a programme on French property prices. You sort of get in contact with people you wouldn’t normally get into contact with.”
When asked how the show will play out, he added, “It’s going to be knitting the whole time.”
“But they will now and then send some pre-produced programmes, like with me for a couple of minutes,” he added.
Sounds almost as exciting at the US TV show “Breaking Bad” doesn’t it? If the show was available in your area, would you watch?
www.digitaljournal.com