Norway enjoys 12-hour TV special of a fireplace, with commentary

Reuters' Balazs Koranyi:

Norwegian public television plans to broadcast a burning fireplace for 12 straight hours from Friday evening, with firewood specialists providing color commentary, expert advice and a bit of cultural tutoring.

"It will be very slow but noble television," said Rune Moeklebust, a producer for state broadcaster NRK, before its commencement.

• [quietstorms]

  Why am I intrigued by this?

• [Paul Lenhart]

  Commetary: Of or pertaining to discussions on comets.

  • [Romeo Vitelli]

     Why Comet?  Why not Cupid, Dasher or any of the other reindeers?

• [Spinkter]

  Kinda deepens the major Scandicrush I’ve got going on right now…

• [Fred Talmadge]

  Well this sounds slightly more fun than the yulelogs we see here on US TV during the holidays.

• [millie fink]

  And thus is America’s sneaking fear of Europe’s generally higher levels of sophistication confirmed.

• [Dlo Burns]

  I am absolutely loving these slow-tv thing. My plan is to get a digital player that will run constantly for my tv so I can have animated art SO I CAN LIVE IN THE FUTURE.

• [Paul Renault]

  Too bad we can’t this in Eastern Canada.  That program’d look nice, playing next to my wood stove.

  Edited to add:
  There was a community radio station in Ontario that used to shut down their programming at around midnight – the station was somewhere away from civilization. They’d leave leave a microphone pointed at the outside and broadcast the sounds of the forest all night long.

  Their audience numbers were highest for this time slot.

  • [ocker3]

     That could be Awesome to sleep to, nor not sleep to ;-)

• [pitkataistelu]

  NRK keep putting out these exciting new formats. I loved their train ride a few years back.

  • [Professor Polymath]

    That 7-hour train video is a hit at parties:
    http://boingboing.net/2009/12/19/norwegian-public-bro.html

    • [vintermann]

      Their most recent train ride slow-TV stunt hasn’t gained as much attention, I think it deserves it. Remember that NRK guy who made time lapse photos of his garden through the seasons? Well, they’ve now combined that concept with slow-TV train journeys

      They combined footage from the train journey Nordlandsbanen taken in four different seasons. Synced it up so you can smoothly switch seasons as you wish (and remix it in exciting ways). 

      http://nrkbeta.no/2013/01/15/nordlandsbanen-minute-by-minute-season-by-season/

• [Amstrad00]

  For those of you looking to have a similar experience, right here on the internet, there’s always this:
  http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/ca4bl/time_to_get_classy/

• [Jason Gilroy]

  I wouldn’t say they enjoyed it.

• [Daemonworks]

  “At one point 600,000 people tuned in to watch that program with 3.2 million people, or over 60 percent of the population, glued to the screen at one point.”

  Well, that clears things up.

• [bluest_one]

  Hopefully, BBC Four will be broadcasting this with subtitles.

  • [Lemoutan]

    Brenne brenne brenne.

    • [ope2244]

      Brenn, brenn, brenn! (Burn, burn, burn!)

  • [Wreckrob8]

    Repeated twice a day and on iplayer so you can catch the best bits again and again.

• [Øyvind]

  Add to this that one of the best selling (and critically acclaimed) books in Norway last year was a book about wood, it seems we have sort of a national fetish.
  If NRK follow their own tradition, the evening of wood might very well end up as a CC licenced torrent soon.

  • [Bill Robinson]

     Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?

• [Frank Diekman]

  Odd reading of the word “enjoy”.

• [sigismund]

  Now you understand True Norwegian Black Metal.

• [Nora Gulliksen]

  We are to be what now?

• [mjd]

  “In Norway we have no hooliganism, because of our… so many fish programmes. Every day we have programmes on fish, on TV and on radio. Phone-ins, everything. [...] It calms people down.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBWSpJanPk&list=PL1BCE8DFD85FFAAB8&index=4

  The timeless genius of Peter Cook.

• [Lemoutan]

  If you have two TVs, please don’t put the one showing the fish tank video on top of it.

• [kiptw]

  My in-laws in NJ just didn’t believe I wanted them to put a tape in the VCR and fill it up with The Yule Log. Thanks to WGN and the Internet, though, I have a Yule Log on my iPod that I can watch any time I want to see happy flames crackling.

• [Historybuff]

  Let’s face it, this would still be better than 90% of the *My Pawnstar Kitchen Celebrity Biggest Loser Idol* Shows that are endemic to TV.