WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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I'm in Tromsø, in Norway, in the Arctic Circle,

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And this beautiful thing here;

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is one of the boats that plies the Hurtigruten,

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and I am probably mispronouncing that.

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But the fast route from
down in the south-west of Norway,

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all the way to here in the Arctic Circle.

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And I say fast route, it takes seven days.

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But here is something you might not know,

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this is an excellent example of slow television.

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Something that the NRK, the National Broadcaster,

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the equivalent of the BBC or PBS, excels at.

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In 2011 they took a load of cameras and just attached them

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to this boat and broadcast its journey 24 hours a day

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as it went up. Well not specifically this boat,

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one very much like it.

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Also, because they did it in the middle of summer and it was not

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a freezing cold mid-afternoon -

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-- it's about 2:30 as I record this --

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It was beautiful all the way.

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Norwegan fjords, gorgeous sun, well if you want to see it

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fortunately they released all the footage through Creative Commons,

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so there's some interesting mashups here on YouTube

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if you don't want to wait the full 134 hours.

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But people did. Here's the strange thing: people did watch this.

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Maybe just for a few minutes, maybe for a few hours,

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maybe they just kept it on the television all the time,

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in the same way as they kept on the train that stayed for 24 hours

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thorough Norway or the log fire

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that simply burned. Slow television is an antidote to the

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reality TV show and the fast cut editing of today.

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And is it massively popular?

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Well, no, of course not, that's why you're watching

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2 minute videos on YouTube rather than 134 hours

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of footage of a boat, but

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don't rule it out because its surprising how many people will just tune in for a little while,

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to something calming and pleasant and slow

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And that is something you might not have known.

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