Slow TV: Finland's 24/7 Newborn Puppies Livestream is Smash Hit
The idea for the show was to educate people on the first few weeks of a dog’s life and provide ‘relief from the terrible things happening in the world’.
A 24-hour Finnish TV show by the broadcaster Yle is focused exclusively on the live progress of a dog and her newborn puppies is attracting millions of viewers. As well as the non-stop webcam, Pentulive - which translates to Puppy Live - includes live evening chat sessions with the dogs’ breeder, a podcast and an instant notification service that updates followers on important moments in the puppies’ progress for eight weeks. The popularity of the 24/7 show is not a bizarre one-off, as this is the sixth season of the hit show by the broadcaster Yle, and the latest contribution to the growing Nordic cultural phenomenon of “slow TV”.
Fans say the puppies offer a relaxing break from work, and comfort from stress, loneliness and illness.
The trend started in Norway in 2009 with Bergensbanen, a seven-hour train journey broadcast on NRK, and was followed in Sweden by SVT’s Den stora älgvandringen - The Great Moose Migration - which features unnarrated glimpses of moose from the north of the country making their annual journey to summer grazing grounds. Watching nature and wildlife, even on a screen, has long been known to boost mood and wellbeing, and it now seems that Scandinavia is setting the bar on this mellow, laid-back TV presentation.
Pentulive has long attracted interest from outside Finland, and this year it is also being broadcast in Sweden. Furthermore, the broadcaster recently announced that it had also sold the format to a broadcaster in the Netherlands.
Yle reports that the current season of Pentulive looks set to break previous viewing records. Across its first two weeks, the livestream has been watched for more than 1 million hours, and the show has attracted 1.85 million unique viewers across all related content.
