Friday 29 April 2016

Is Slow TV coming to the Mid West?

Further UPDATE, April 2016...

Prerecorded web Slow TV has indeed arrived in the Mid West; FoodFarmsCSA now have a few videos available on their channel.

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UPDATE on the story originally posted below on 17th December

Hear an interview on the Green Visions feature from KUMD Duluth Public Radio, Lisa Johnson talks with Janaki Fisher-Merrit of Food Farms - at this link here. Updated 21st January 2016.

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You may have wondered "Will Norwegian Slow TV ever arrive in the USA? Even in the Mid West?" Well, a family run organic farm in Wrenshall, Minnesota is bringing "Food Farm Slow TV" to the web. 

A short taster clip on YouTube gives the suggestion that this is going to be a web based Slow TV of the type closer to 'Wallpaper TV' or 'Ambient TV' where small details change. It looks to be similar in spirit to the engaging web based Slow TV now broadcast online from the Czech Republic.

Watch the rotating potatoes and occasional darting green gloved hand with the ambient noise of the machinery feeding the produce along. What questions does this make you ask? What are the selection criteria? Where are the spuds coming from? What happens next? Enjoy the taters teasing you with their clip...



Coincidentally just this week Norwegians Worldwide shared on their advent calendar on Facebook that Minnesota has 851,000 Norwegians - the greatest number of Norwegians in any state in the USA.

Norwegian Slow TV has already been transmitted from the Mid West when the First Lutheran Church, the Luren Singing Society and Northern Lights choirs from Decorah, Iowa - just 279 miles drive south from Wrenshall - took part via satellite link in the marathon Hymn Book Slow TV broadcast from Trondheim in November 2014.

Ponderings on a TV broadcast in the USA in 2016 can be found here; and there's a BBC4 broadcast on Christmas Eve of reindeer pulling a sledge for two hours. More details here

Food Farm has an extensive blog worth looking at here, a Facebook Page, Instagram and Twitter

Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog

Sunday 24 April 2016

Go Slowly, Life is Short

Ponder this in relation to Slow TV.

Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog

Saturday 23 April 2016

Slow TV en los medios espaƱoles - Slow TV in the Spanish media

It's good to see Slow TV being talked about around the world; this week The Slow TV Blog has had hits from Spain (I usually get a few Spanish hits each month), but significantly activity from Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

I have what I consider to be a good net of searches which tracks Slow TV but this one had escaped me. A bit of asking around online reveals that Slow TV had a good feature in Spanish magazine, Magnet (thanks, NM!).

Relying on google's translation to English shows a well thought out, considered piece looking at Slow TV from a few angles, embedded footage of different types of Slow TV.

"Boring things can become your new pleasure" nails one way of understanding it, perfectly. Allowing everyday happenings to be invested with a sense of worth, a sense of event and something to marvel at, enabling the subject to tell its own story and facilitating the viewer to take from the broadcast something of their own. It's a sympathetic, considered tone and well worth a look.

To see more, have a look here; if you're using Chrome, right-click and translate to English (or whatever!) to get a reasonable sense of what the article is saying.

A Slow TV is made in Barcelona, of the pre-recorded internet video type, as means of exploring Barcelona. See this link for Slow BTV.

Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog


Wednesday 20 April 2016

Appearance on BBC Breakfast for Slow TV and Saltstraumen

Me, Thomas Hellum & Naga Munchetty
Norway has another Slow TV event on its way for 7th May - the changing of the tide at Saltstraumen. Picked up by UK media last weekend I got an email drop in from BBC Breakfast on Saturday afternoon. There aren't many folk who can speak knowledgeably and insightfully about Slow TV in the UK, so, yours truly fitted the bill... a very early get up for a Sunday morning (05:15) and two interviews at 0655 and 0855.

BBC Breakfast 17th April 
The second interview was shared with Thomas Hellum, Slow TV project manager and one of the innovators of the format from NRK Hordaland, in Bergen. It was all over very quickly, as befits most media experience, but I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to speak about Slow TV. It seems a very simple format, a very simple idea - but the way it plays out for the broadcaster and is received by the audience is a very complex, manifold experience. Here's to more speaking out for Slow TV. Bring it on.


If you wish to catch more than a few seconds of the Norwegian Ferry journey from 2012 (also refer to Thomas' t-shirt!), the entire Hurtigruten Minutt for Minutt is available here.

Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog

Monday 11 April 2016

Full interview about Slow TV, the blog and me...

I was recently interviewed (via email) for Strategies, a French media magazine - you can read the edited version, in English in the blog piece here. I found writing the responses a helpful exercise, so here is the full transcript of my interview:

1. 
When did you start your blog, and how did you become interested in Slow TV?

I started the Slow TV blog early autumn 2014 in response to the lack of a centralised resource about the format. I was working on my final film for a Masters Degree in TV Documentary Production at Salford University; obviously, the final project was to make a documentary. I'd begun ruminating over Slow TV as my major film in January that year. The news had been picking up the seemingly bizarre success of the format in Norway and I was looking for another way of doing a documentary, as opposed to a typical 'facts and figures' documentary. The more I scratched the surface, the more interested I became. When I started the blog, I'd already had one production trip to Oslo and Bergen to interview key NRK staff involved in the development, broadcast and distribution of the shows and was surprised there was no bringing together on the web for something which has rapidly become 'a thing' of note. With a second production trip to Norway on the cards to film behind the scenes at 60 hour Slow TV event I also wanted to have somewhere I could point people to when producing.

2. What’s the interest of Slow TV for the audience?

The reason I became interested is that Slow TV can be many things to different people at the time. Bearing in mind the format has emerged into different types. There are journey types (Bergensbanen and Hurtigruten from Norway), there are the participatory types (singing through the entire 899 hymns of the Norwegian hymnbook and the reading of the whole of War and Peace in Russia), there are the 'ambient' type such as a DVD of ploughing, or the webcam type such as available in Czech Republic. The interest of the audience includes relaxation, wallpaper TV (treating it like ambient music - background or immersive media trip), to aspects of national heritage, pride and identity. When it's done very well, Slow TV can become a monster of a national event such as several times in Norway or in Russia with War and Peace. At the same time it can be a warm and cosy affair which you may lose yourself in more than you'd planned. Over all, Slow TV at its best is a real time documentary experience.

3. What demographic does Slow TV appeal to?

In Norway, it's principally broadcast on NRK2 which is an older age group. In the UK so far it's been on BBC4, which is for specialist audience of all ages, but I'd suspect it would fall under the same larger demographic as Norway. It tends to be more contemplative in nature and its editing pace (real time in length, cuts not happening so often) better fits older viewers. My children can't stand the idea of Slow TV! Looking at audience motivations is a very interesting thing; older folk (in which I, in my 40s, would include myself)  are more mindful of life and the need to savour moments have 'eudaimonic' motivations as opposed to 'hedonic'. Of course, this is broadly speaking. Different Slow TV subjects will draw slightly different audiences. Train journeys, knitting, singing hymns are very diverse topics. There is a live 1km sheer rock-climbing Slow TV on the cards, which instead of the expected relaxing form of Slow TV, will bring an element of risk and peril. I expect this might pull in younger 'stimulation seeking' viewers. Another angle to take is the participatory Slow TV - when 3,000 people are reading War and Peace over several days or a couple hundred choirs taking it in turn to sing 899 hymns over 60 continuous broadcast hours, friends, family and connections will want to see them. I also got to interview a project manager from TV2, Norway's principal commercial channel, who cited their mainly web-based, pre-recorded Slow TV of helicopter flights brought in a different demographic than NRK2. As for social media, indeed, that brings in a whole new layer of participation and interaction.


4. How do you think brands and advertisers might be able to use Slow TV? Have shows ever been sponsored?

Yes, absolutely. A local station in the US broadcast a steak being grilled over 13 hours with embedded competitions to keep people hooked. There was a spoof real-time advert of a 'flight from hell' filmed over several hours by an airline, put together as means of juxtaposing its own superior service and experience. As for 'linear TV' on a major broadcaster, it's yet to happen as far as I know. I have approached a commercial broadcaster in the UK with ideas and they feel there is nothing in Slow TV for them; I have gone to an independent production company with several ideas and they feel the UK TV landscape will not accommodate anything like the Norwegian format as it's too much of a risk. Even though NRK has created several national events with Slow TV and has become world famous for it. An obvious inspiration for commercial Slow TV could be drawn from the film which foresaw reality TV. "The Truman Show" is the 'Slow TV' of a man's entire life, broadcast continuous in real time. Much in Truman's world - from appliances to clothes - are available to buy in catalogues, not to mention the obtrusive product-placement pieces-to-camera. Slow TV in a commercial context is something waiting to happen and could work well if the broadcaster concerned gives it their all and not a half hearted truncated accommodation of Slow TV late at night. 

5. Where do you see this trend going - what hasn’t been achieved yet that you’d like to see?

I see this trend continuing and spreading, though really only Russia has pulled off a Slow TV project worthy of that of NRK's consistent track record. I am delighted other countries and broadcasters are having a go but haven't yet understood its full potential. It's an amazing format, give it the time, broadcast slot and production value it deserves.  
Norway has a couple Slow TV projects to come this year; we're overdue a Norwegian-guided USA based Slow TV production (meant to have been November last year). The BBC I expect will further dabble in Slow TV and I hope will better frame its conceptualisation of the subjects it's been showing. I'd like to see a British broadcaster have a full-on go at Slow TV before online platforms catch on (shhhh!); the TV we watch at home on the big screen is still what makes for more 'important' TV, although younger viewing habits and nascent technologies. Indeed, as viewing technology evolves, there could be applications for immersive Slow TV experiences via 360 degree headsets. One of the Norwegians' driving factors in producing Slow TV has been to push the technological challenges in delivering their projects and as broadcasters look to the future, adapting that production to viewing possibilities will no doubt be something which will be explored.
Slow TV should be around for a long time. New subjects, new countries and broadcasters. If it's done well and correctly it will be something audiences will love and ask for more of - as Norway has been showing the rest of the world for nearly seven years now. My working in producing Slow TV is also something I'd like to happen, to - and another reason for my blog!

My documentary is available to view entirely here, or as a playlist here.

Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog