Who Did NOT Watch This?



You could have seen this little lighthouse live on NRK2 or online. Or did you?  CC licensed by NRKbeta.no.

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK's Hurtigruten project which shows the voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes, an almost 6 day long live TV documentary from a postal/passenger/cruise ship, has drawn attention world wide. I have recently covered the unique combination of two screens (one for television, one for the internet). NRK's web statistics show visitors from 176 countries. That is amazing!

Click here or read on to see which countries were not interested.

Not surprisingly, the top ten list of web users by country is as follows:

1. Norway (57,9% of the users)
2. Denmark (7,5%)
3. USA (6,5%)
4. Germany (3,6%)
5. Great Britain (3,5%)
6. France (2,9%)
7. Netherlands (2,5%)
8. Sweden (2,5%)
9. Canada (1,2%)
10. Russland (0,9%)

All of these countries have, of various reasons, close connections to Norway. They account for 89% of the total. But the remaining 11% spread out to another 166 countries. And the real question is: Which countries were not at all interested? (And why?)

There are 192 UN countries in the world (193 from July 9 when Southern Sudan becomes independent). I also count the Vatican, Kosovo, Palestine, Western Sahara and Taiwan as countries, totalling 197 (soon 198). That leaves only 21 countries from where no one watched the greatest sea journey in the world. North Korea goes without saying, unless Kim Jong-Il himself (aka. "Supreme Leader") suddenly took interest himself (only the top leadership in the country has access to the internet). With North Korea as a given, 20 remain. Before continuing to the answer (link below), please feel free to guess as a comment below.

My guess of 20 countries is as follows (and I still haven't seen the answer):

Bhutan, Central African Republic, China (a wild guess, but nrk.no is blocked there following the Nobel Peace Prize 2010), Comoros, Congo Brazzaville, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nauru, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Western Sahara.

Click here for the answer
I have now checked the statistics, and I was wrong on some of them. How about you? Please feel free to comment below on your suggestions. And find the answer here.

Those Left Behind

49 countries did not have any registered web TV viewers from "Hurtigruten." CC licensed by NRKbeta.no.

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK reported that 176 countries visited their web site to follow Hurtigruten. My big question was, from which countries did no one visit nrk.no/hurtigruten to watch the stunning scenery of the Norwegian coast?

It turned out that the list of 176 contains some "wannabe countries," at least according to my definition of countries (192 UN countries + the Vatican, Kosovo, Palestine, Western Sahara and Taiwan, totalling 197 (Southern Sudan will be added as number 198 on July 9)).

Some, in this case, means 28. These are "wannabe countries," meaning that they belong to another independent country or they're just own IP ranges. The real number of  countries from which people have been following "Hurtigruten" is in other words 148. Still a hell of a lot, and extremelly impressive. NRK has with this truly multimedial project really put down the foundation for a new genre. The 28 countries that shouldn't, in my opinion, be counted as countries are, as follows:

28 wannabes
Aruba (Dutch)
Bermuda (British)
BQ (dunno where this is, own IP, at least)
British Virgin Islands (British)
Cayman Islands (British)
CW (unknown, own IP)
Faeroe Islands (Danish)
French Guyana (French)
French Polynesia (French)
GG (not me, but a cool name for a "country..." - own IP)

Gibraltar (British)
Greenland (Dansih)
Guadeloupe  (French)
Guam (American)
Hong Kong (Chinese)
IM (unknown, own IP)
JE (unknown, own IP)
Macau (Chinese)
Martinique (French)
New Caldonia (French)

Norfolk Island (Australian)
Other Europe (who knows...)
Puerto Rico (American)
Reserved (well...)
Reunion (French)
St. Pierre and Miquelon (French)
SX (unknown, own IP)
Turks and Caicos Islands (British)

The 49 that were left behind
197 countries minus 176 countries equals 21. 21 plus 28 equals 49. That means that 49 "real" countries have been unlucky enough to not have any viewers of "Hurtigruten, minute by minute" to tell the tale to the rest. Those countries are:

Antigua and Barbuda
Benin
Bhutan
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cape Verde
Cantral African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Congo Brazzaville

Cote d'Ivoire
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Gabon
Grenada
Guinea
Haiti
Kiribati
Kosovo

Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Maldives
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Nauru
North Korea
Palau

Papua New Guinea
Rwanda
Samoa
Sao Tome and Principe
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
Somalia
Swaziland
Timor-Leste (East Timor)

Togo
Tonga
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
The Vatican
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia

In other words, mainly countries from Africa and the Pacific with a few Asian and North American ones thrown in. Plus Kosovo and the Vatican (probably covered by the IPs of Serbia and Italy). Perhaps not really surprising given the lack of infrastructure, lack of Norwegian tourists and lack of interest in local media.

The top ten countries? Read about them here.

Half of Norway and a Voyage of Two Screens



Typical view from M/S Nordnorge. CC licensed by NRKbeta.no.

 Norway's five and a half day long Coastal Voyage is broadcast live minute by minute on Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK's national TV channel NRK2 and being streamed 24/7 on the website nrk.no/hurtigruten. It is one of the world's longest, and slowest moving, live broadcast ever. But quite possibly also the most beautiful.

What started as a crazy idea turned into a crazy multimedial concept on TV and the internet. But crazy is good. Norwegians love it. The first weekend, almost 2.6 million people tuned in to NRK2 to watch parts of the voyage. That is more than half the population of Norway (almost 5 million). And many thousands more followed the journey via web TV. 46% of those were watching the streamed journey from outside Norway.

NRKs Head of Research, Mr. Kristian Tolonen, breaks the numbers down a little. 180,000 people have, on average, been watching 24/7 since the start last Thursday. The peak was on Sunday evening, 15 minutes before midnight, when 692,000 was watching M/S Nordnorge (M/S NorthernNorway) enter the fjord of Trollfjorden, one of the highlights of the journey.

Thousands and thousands of people wave at the ship from the shore, other boats, bridges, piers and mountains. Many of the spectators are also shown in close up on national television, something quite a few realise after being told so via mobile phones by television viewers at home. Their typical reaction? Double speeded waving.

Two screens
Judging by comments on Twitter, Facebook and nrk.no/hurtigruten, a lot of people are watching the journey on TV while communicating with others via the web. People are praising NRK, the license funded broadcaster, for daring to do such a thing. And many are saying that they are now happy to pay the license fee. That is not usually uttered loudly by many. My guess is that the number of people paying the license fee wil increase quite a bit the next days and weeks. Around 10% do currently not pay.

The fact that the programme, if we can call it such, is so long and slow moving with continuous spectacular views, cheering people, orchestras playing and choires singing in every port makes it ideal for dialogue. This is a social experience, perfect for two screens. People are watching their beloved coast together on broadcasted television, and they have a need to share and discuss these moments, often in quite personal ways, via the internet. Whether it is with friends or strangers does not seem to matter.

The official Facebook group of the voyage has over 47,000 fans, whereas several of the destinations have "trended" on Twitter.

The concept is intriguing, extremelly fascinating and highly addictive. Some people claim to have watched 72 hours without sleep, others sleep on the sofa in front of the television set to miss as little as possible. This journey seems to make Norwegians extremelly proud of their country. There are dozens of Tweets and Facebook messages from people sharing that they are crying due to the strong emotion. Others proclaim this to be the best TV, or anti TV as some people call it, that they have EVER watched (usually followed by a number of exclamation marks). It may very well be the start of a different genre of programming, unless this is something that only appeals to Norwegians. It is about watching together, knowing that everyone else is sharing and taking part in a social setting which involves the sharing of impressions. Only broadcast television can make people come together like this. But not without the help of social media. Combination is key.

And it ain't over yet. You can follow the journey live on nrk.no/hurtigruten until Wednesday morning, June 22, Norwegian time.



Meeting M/S Kong Harald, a sister ship. CC licensed by NRKbeta.no.