TV from hell

ON SEPTEMBER 15, the Danes are going to elect a new parliament. The election date was announced as late as Friday, leaving only twenty days for our media to revel in polls and pundits. Maybe that is why Danish TV now invites me to watch 200-or-so videos at the same time?

AT THE START OF THE SHOW, the anchor, Kim Bildsøe Lassen, commented on his new wall-of-images with great excitement: ”Here you will be able to see everything that happens during the election campaign”. But of course I won’t. The only thing I can see is that something is happening. For all I know, they could show mud boxing or synchronized swimming on every third screen and I wouldn’t notice.

THE BIG MAP is supposed to reveal where in our country (which, as you probably know, is huge) the top candidates will be on any given time or day. On this first evening, apparently everyone was in Copenhagen as that was where the opening TV debate was held.

LUCKILY ENOUGH, the screens are pretty small and the images generally quite blurred so normal people will make no attempts to decode them. If they tried, they would probably miss most of what was said (and then again, you can discuss how great a disaster that would be).
So, obviously, the reason for producing and broadcasting this abundance of moving images is not that DR expects anyone to actually try to follow them. The point is only to show that ”a hell of a lot is happening”. Please God, let us not be boring.

You can check out Kandidaterne yourself on http://www.dr.dk/nu/player/#/valg-2011/16453