Stuff Swedish People Like: TV-news

Swedish people watch TV-news for hours every day. Swedes are probably the most educated people in the world when it comes to awareness of foreign and domestic current affairs. This is a tradition from the old public service TV-networks, who were the only TV source up until about 20 years ago, when commercial TV was unbanned.

These long-time TV-news watchers are most likely of the older generations, who will gladly bench themselves from 19.30 and on to 20.00 everyday. Some of them will watch another news show from 21.00 to 21.30 on the other public service channel. Hence, the Swedes are experts in the ongoings of the middle east, knowing the names of the Israeli government officials, as well as Hizbollah leaders. They can tell you all about the elections in Iraq, as well as how the women are being tied down to wood stoves in Afghanistan.

The studio anchors of these public service news shows become like gods to the Swedes. Their words are ranked as the highest possible level of credibility, beating even the Academy who chooses the Nobel Prize winners, who suffer from a surprisingly low level of credibility actually, for electing only extremely unknown authors. These news anchors can not use public transportation, but must travel with wigs and sunglasses, not to be stormed by adoring news fans.

Usually one of these shows will open with the latest global news, then move on to the developments in Ghaza, then show a clip from the most recent car bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad. Soon they put the light on some Swedish retirement home where the diapers have been left unchanged on some elders, and no one is found responsible. Then they will most likely move on to youth jobless issues, and maybe show a full day of the life of a jobless young person, who will surf the web, download movies and get piercings and tattoos. Towards the end, the financial news go on, where they show how the stock markets have done for the day, and tell how many workers have been laid off from Volvo and SAAB.

Finally, the weather comes on, and it's normally bad news, so this has to be a chirpy person, who won't be discouraged by bringing the same grey story most every day. The weather people from these shows are major celebs in Sweden, on par with the royal family. If you want to get to know someone Swedish, you can just say: "Hey, isn't it sad that Jarl Alfredius left us? He had so much more to give! At least I'm happy that weather-Per comes on every day!" Jarl just passed away, unfortunately in his early sixties. He was one of the most popular anchors. Weather-Per is a heavy metal type of weather man who has latched on to the Al Gore Global Warming bandwagon.