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February 1, 2019

Why slow TV deserves our (divided) attention

SBS’s suite of slow TV programs, “Slow Summer”, arrived at a fortuitous time in our annual media trajectory, when we were briefly relieved of the busyness plaguing our lives.

On the back of last year鈥檚 successful trip on , SBS commissioned Sydney-based Mint Pictures to produce two more journeys, The Indian Pacific: Australia鈥檚 Longest Train, and The Kimberley Cruise: Australia鈥檚 Last Great Wilderness. The programs were each three hours long on SBS. Longer versions (17 and 14 hours respectively) screened on SBS鈥檚 Viceland channel.

Others airing are BBC Four鈥檚 All Aboard! The Canal Trip (a mere two hours), and North to South, a three-hour, Tolkien inspired, multiple vehicle journey through New Zealand鈥檚 Middle-earth.

Ratings have compared to last year鈥檚 efforts. (The three-hour versions of the Indian Pacific and Kimberley Cruise programs had reached around 1-1.3 million viewers a week after the broadcast, compared with last year鈥檚 1.7 million for The Ghan.) Still, slow TV is actually the perfect genre for today鈥檚 viewing habits.

What is slow TV?

In its purest, Norwegian-inspired form, slow TV is characterised by minute-by-minute footage of a culturally significant journey, event, or activity, edited together chronologically from numerous camera angles, resulting in an unconventionally long viewing experience.

While The Ghan: The Full Journey might sound long (16 and a half hours), this pales in comparison to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK鈥檚 134-hour live broadcast aboard the cruise ship in 2011.  

 

 

Multiple cameras are often fixed onto the moving subject, notably the classic 鈥減hantom ride鈥� perspective from the front of a train, but aerial shots, drones, and subtle tripod movements are also used. The editing pace is slow: most shots last at least 30 seconds, but a single perspective can linger for over an hour.

Apart from a few notable exceptions, such as an isolated cow or the Queen of Norway as she sails by, the journey tends not to single out particular characters. Noticeably absent is the voice of a narrator, nor is there a host, nor even music. Instead, sound emanates from the environments we see (that鈥檚 鈥渄iegetic sound鈥� in cinema speak).

In short, slow TV is 鈥渟low鈥� because it lacks the rollercoaster of emotional cues, narrative guides, and breathless editing pace we have come to expect from television.

Our multitasking age

The long duration is the first obvious challenge slow TV has when attracting viewers. But if you consider our fondness for sport, we鈥檙e experts at that. A single day of test cricket usually runs longer than six hours. The of us who tuned in to the men鈥檚 Australian Open final on Sunday were disappointed Nadal and Djokovic couldn鈥檛 reignite their five hour and 53-minute battle of 2012.

Apart from sport, and whatever happened to Big Brother, most of us are now binge-watching our favorite shows. According to , around two thirds of us are bingeing, defined as watching three or more consecutive TV episodes in one go, with almost half of us paying for a subscription video on demand service such as Netflix or Stan. Deloitte鈥檚 2017 survey of over 2000 consumers suggests we are spending around 17 hours per week watching movies or TV across our devices.  

 

 

Despite our appetite for prolonged screen exposure, slow TV is so unconventional that SBS has pitched it as a dare for us to watch. Embracing divided responses from last year鈥檚 foray with The Ghan, this year鈥檚 Slow Summer features a series of rival tweets: 鈥淟iterally as exciting as watching paint dry鈥�; 鈥淭his is f-ing ART!鈥�; 鈥淵awn鈥� I鈥檓 Ghan to bed鈥� ; 鈥�#TheGhan a goddam masterpiece鈥�.

This promo captures one of the secrets to the genre鈥檚 success: online participation and interaction through social media makes it a collective viewing experience. Travelling across the Nullarbor on The Indian Pacific by yourself would be as lonely as midnight infomercials, but #SlowSummer fills the carriages with discussion, commentary, and comraderie.

While reality television and talk shows have been capitalising on social media interaction for some time, slow TV opens up an entirely new approach to producing content for audiences to provide their own commentary.  

 

 

Perhaps the most striking finding from is that 91% of us are now multi-tasking while watching TV (up from 79% in 2014): in other words, we might be 鈥減assively鈥� consuming what we鈥檙e watching.

So the real brilliance of slow TV is its ability to meet the needs of both passive and active consumption. It works on two levels: as a beautiful view in the living room, kitchen, and wherever else your flat-screens might be, and on the other hand if you give it the attention it deserves, you might find yourself embarking on an intellectually stimulating and imaginative journey.

It is precisely the lack of narration and character driven narrative that opens up the space for interpretation and opinion.

While the Slow Summer programs are only available online , as with as regular programs, their unique capacity to inspire audiences means they should remain of interest for decades to come.

Our politicians and media consistently chase short-term achievements. As we all rush back to work, perhaps revising our KPIs and considering the value of 鈥渟low ratings鈥� might make our collective journey more enjoyable.

, Lecturer in Media Arts,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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