The television program Go’Kväll, Good Evening, shown daily on Sweden’s Television, announced the other day that it would no longer have a book review segment. This has riled up a lot of people, including the newspaper Expressen and other smaller dailies around the country. “Bye-bye public education,” wrote program host and author Daniel Sjölin. “Now is the final annihilation of literature’s presence on SVT” ().
SVT says that they need to renew and rejuvenate the program. Apparently the show’s loyal audience is made up of women in the over-55 category. Which is bad or something. “It’s like SVT wet their finger, held it up in the air, and figured that only Netflix matters” said Ingalill Mosander, who has worked on the program for twenty years.
Not at all, responds Bengt Strömbro: “we’re neither hunting a younger audience nor dicking around with our faithful viewers: It’s about developing the format to increase interest, and staying relevant.” (He could have said messing around, or screwing around, but you get the picture.)
SVT’s programming choices are not irrelevant. It’s the state TV channel, the one you don’t have to pay for in some cable package to see, but to which some of your taxes go. It’s formally run by a foundation, which serves as a sort of buffer between the state and the channel’s organisation. Until just recently, only January of this year, the board members of the foundation were politically appointed. Someone finally figured out how weird that looked, and they changed it.
SVT’s role is to meet the interests of all of Sweden, and to contribute to a feeling of community around the country. “When people in Sweden are watching at the same time, and sharing the same experience, we create a feeling of connection – we share both solemnity and laughs” ( https://www.svt.se/omoss/var-roll/). In this case, they took out a possibility for both solemnity and laughs when they cut the book coverage.