Posts Tagged ‘cruise’
Very slow sightseeing cruise show is a TV hit in Norway
Worn out by a fast-paced life and faster-paced television shows but lack a vacation budget? Take a five-day cruise along Norway’s scenic fjords, all free and streamed live on Norwegian public television.
For 8,040 minutes straight — including all the boring bits — viewers can follow the Hurtigruten MMS Nordnorge cruise ship and its roughly 670 passengers and crew as the vessel steams north along Norway’s jagged coastline.
The “minute-by-minute” coverage started on Thursday and includes all on-board announcements and views from 11 cameras focusing on the spectacular fjords, boat traffic around the ship, officers on the bridge and the mostly elderly passengers strolling the decks and taking in the scenery.
“It is slow, it is very slow,” said Rune Moeklebust, the project manager for the show running on the NRK2 channel.
“It is the opposite to everything else on TV — that’s why it stands out and why, apparently, people want to watch.”
Preliminary viewing data is encouraging, Moeklebust told Reuters, with 1.3 million of Norway’s 4.9 million residents at least “stopping by” NRK2 between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the first day…
“Some say it’s like watching paint dry but it’s so fun to sit in the master control room and mix the cameras,” said Moeklebust, adding that 22 NRK crew were aboard the vessel providing the non-stop coverage.
Moeklebust said the idea for the cruise livecast came after the success of his previous minute-by-minute coverage from a train making a 7-hour trip between Oslo and Bergen, which was viewed at least in part by 1.2 million people in 2009.
Just as “slow food” satisfies a need that much of today’s society ignores, this slow experience is especially enjoyable.
Actually, it reminds me of one of the first hits in early days of American TV staring to add high definition broadcasting: a show called “Sunrise” that picked out a lovely spot somewhere and recorded the morning hour that spanned the sun rising.
I used to record it so I wouldn’t miss an episode.
Benefit cheats face jail after round-the-world yacht voyage
A couple who claimed benefits while sailing around the world in a £100,000 yacht have been told that they face jail.
Shashi Bacheta, 52, and Jeffrey Coles, 58, had spent almost two years sailing around the world on the 70ft vessel, living off the proceeds from their post office and property businesses. They were found out when photographs emerged of them sailing the yacht in the Canaries.
Bacheta claimed she was so ill she could not get out of bed in Swansea, when in fact she was scuba diving off Kenya. By the end of the sailing trip she had claimed almost £50,000 in housing benefits, disability living allowances, council tax relief and income support. Coles helped her to obtain an extra £12,000 and backed up her claims that they were not living together.
The fraud came undone after they came across two former police officers in Gran Canaria who were also sailing the world. Months later, Jeffrey Fish, who investigated the couple on behalf of Swansea county council, found mention of their yacht, Kismet, on a blog kept by the retired police officers and a photograph showing Bacheta and Coles looking tanned in the Canaries. Fish said the pictures contradicted Bacheta’s claims that she was so ill she needed 24-hour care. “The photograph said it all.”
Some crooks are so smug about their crookedness they think no one will ever catch them. Did they never hear of the Internet?
