We knew slow travel, slow fashion and slow living. Now let’s move to Slow TV. Television channels rely on the broadcasting of daily or natural events in real time and continuously. Dreamlike landscapes, life of animals, journey of a train… A trend that capitalizes on contemplation.
Exit the continuous news channels, the fast-paced games and the noisy talk shows. While television is entering a decisive phase between the loss of interest of young people in the small screen and more mature generations still used to turn on the television, the mass of existing programs continues to make it an important entertainment channel. If hundreds of varied contents coexist, a very particular phenomenon takes the opposite side of this television overabundance and Netflix-style all-you-can-eat buffet: the slow TV.
Television contemplation
Slow TV refers to so-called contemplative television channels. These offer an immersive and soothing experience by broadcasting daily or natural events in real time, without narration or editing. For several hours, even 24 hours a day, these channels present landscapes, animals in their natural environment or even particular trips. Always in a mantra of gentleness, meditative observation and reverie.
“Slow TV” is a long-term concept, where television formats are very timed and designed for short programming. It spreads over several hours, several weeks, even several months. […] The ‘slow TV’ is without a script, without a scenario, without narration and takes the form of a device. We place cameras, we make a sequence shot without knowing exactly what is going to happen,’ explains Barbara Laborde, researcher, lecturer at the Sorbonne Nouvelle university and expert in television and media history, in an interview for RFI.
From Norway to the world
According to the expert, slow TV originated on Norwegian television with a train journey between Bergen and Oslo. The very first slow TV program, or sakte-TV in Norwegian, was broadcast in 2009 on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), the public television channel. Filmed in the summer, the program offered an uninterrupted seven-hour experience. “A camera was placed on the front of the locomotive and we watched it roll along the tracks for the entire journey.”
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