The world’s longest documentary – broadcasting live now
After months of planning and technical preparation, state broadcaster NRK was ready to “go live” Thursday night with its marathon coverage of a Hurtigruten voyage from Bergen to the line’s turnaround point in Kirkenes.
Viewers will be able to follow every minute of the trip on NRK’s channel 2, until it ends on Wednesday morning June 22. All other programs, also news broadcasts, have been removed from the channel’s schedule for 5.5 days.
The voyage is also being streamed on NRK’s web site.
The journey is known as “The World’s Most Beautiful Sea Voyage”. The broadcast will amount to more than 134 hours of continuous coverage as NRK cameras mounted all around the Hurtigruten ship MS Nord-Norge chart the five-day voyage.
NRK officials hope the program will be registered in the Guinness book of world records as the world’s longest documentary program.
The production is costing around NOK 3 million (USD 545.000) with the state broadcaster picking up the entire tab, but NRK officials think it’s worth it, as a sheer TV viewing experience. NRK has also sold portions of the program to Swedish state broadcaster SVT, Danish radio and broadcasters in Finland and the Færøe Islands, Views and news from Norway writes.
NRK is already experienced in showing Zen-television. In 2009 the company showed a seven-hour program documenting every minute of the train journey across the mountains from Bergen to Oslo. 1.2 million (of a total of 4.9 million) Norwegians watched all or part of the broadcast.
Watch a ten minute taste of “Bergensbanen” or download the whole program here
