British Airways is planning one of the most novel concepts in air travel in years, yet one so simplistic it might just lull you to sleep on long-haul flights.
The carrier next month will introduce a fascinating concept that is taking Scandanavia by storm called "Slow TV." Among its entertainment options, BA will offer video of a seven-hour, 16-minute train ride from Bergen, Norway to the city of Oslo - a silent journey through picturesque countrysides, snow-capped mountains and even long stretches of darkness when the train enters a tunnel.
If that sounds boring to you, that's the point. British Airways is looking to relax its passengers on long flights, and the long train ride was such a hit in Norway - in a country of 5 million people, more than 1 million watched the video - that it caught BA's attention.
Here's half the journey right here if you're so inclined to burn three-plus hours.
"There's a hypnotic, calming and entertaining quality to Slow TV that is perfect for in-flight entertainment," British Airways' on-board entertainment manager Richard D'Cruze said in a statement.
So what is 'Slow TV?' It's a genre of television that quite literally takes normal, everyday - some might say mundane - events like a train ride or knitting a sweater and turns it into reality television at is most basic and most raw. The Bergen-to-Oslo train ride aired in Norway in 2009, and since then new videos have included a five-day, 134-hour, 1,300-mile journey of a ship, as well as 18 hours of video of salmon swimming upstream.
But while it sounds new, it's really not.
Slow TV was pioneered in the early 1960s by the six-hour documentary "Sleep" from concept artist Andy Warhol, which showed nothing but a man sleeping. Those who live in the New York metropolitan area will also most certainly recall the "Yule Log" on WPIX local Channel 11, in which the station showed a burning log in a fireplace along with seasonal music on Christmas Eve.
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