“So that’s impossible!”

This is a chronicle. Chronicles reveal the attitude of the author. You can submit chronicle and debate entries to VG here.

EGON HOLSTAD, commentator on the VG collaboration newspaper in Tromsø

That is my fleshly father who roared at it in the basement living room, where we had an old wood-framed tube TV. And now it got serious, just after half past ten on a Sunday night.

What happened during church time on Sundays not being so careful in the house I grew up in Fauske in Nordland. Then it is something completely different when it comes to Sports Review in the most sacred of ways. And now the phone rings. Someone has called us in the middle of our sports-related communion.

It’s one thing now that you yourself have no interest in sports, that’s your problem, but quite another to disturb someone else’s sanctuary. At that time there was a way to eliminate cultural capital.

– This has got to be serious, Dad says, before he storms out cursing down the hall, picks up the phone and says “We’ll deal with that later”, then hangs up, then hangs up. It’s not serious. At least not serious enough. It eventually became a routine, only to be cut short when Sports Review started. Nothing could be that important.

Sports reviews are The Most Important Sunday, all year round. It’s the weekend rush and amusement pastime before the humdrum daily life and trivial chores set in. There’s also a kind of tacit acceptance that bedtime is extended on Sundays, I think it’s part of the educational process.

In the following days NRK announced that Sports Review would be cut and removed from broadcast schedules, as lamb chops are old and wilted, social media has been filled with emotional reminiscences about the institution. Or, more precisely, what it is. Because it is a completely correct label. It is an honorable and outdated institution that is now running out of time.

The weather is always good on May 17th. Christmas is always white. And Sports reviews are always good. This is how nostalgia helps us encapsulate the past and remember it as something better than before. So, in the last few days, I sat down on YouTube and NRK’s ​​online TV and watched old broadcasts, to see what it was like, and it was both touching and ridiculous.

Dududu-du-du-dudu-dududu

Dududu-du-du-dudu-dududu

Dududu-du-du-dudu-dududu

Dudu – Dudu- DuDu – Dudu – Sproooooooing!

Trained by him the threadbare, giddy theme song sends me straight back to another time, where it quickly hit me that we’re a nation that accepts a lot of weirdness. Or small and strange.

Because it’s actually not just compressed gold that we get in TV boxes. Classic winter sports are now a thing. We have to look at most of the races which saw fourth and twelfth places for Jarle Halsnes, and the occasional world cup win for Erik Håker. And cross-country skiing, combined, ice hockey and, of course, jumping, again with Roger Ruud from Lensbygda.

But we also have see a lot of bandy, this poor sport where you don’t see the ball, and with the clubs and associations that I associate exclusively with this sport. Not to forget the ski ballet, sort of a sick mix of break dancing and totally insane après skiing. Also they read out what I remember as all the results. As in “absolutely all results – i each person division”. In bandy, ice hockey, volleyball, handball and football. The tables appeared later, in shabby digital letters from the Cretaceous period of the computer age.

In addition, we got See highlights from all of Norway’s championships, regardless of sport or season. Wrestling, gymnastics, dancing with and without ice as a surface, day and night orienteering, basketball, shooting, athletics, rowing, rowing, weightlifting, road racing, rallying, swimming and diving.

Is there anyone who competed in organized form, the public broadcaster was always there with a camera or two and earned a maligned broadcasting fee. Not to mention feeling every move from horses with blindfolds and license plates, running on the track with some horses that have names even sadistic psychopaths would give their pets.

Norwegian and English football was duly covered, and despite receiving the results over the radio, all match reports were presented as if no one knew the results. Plus, they read off the entire tip coupon, and if it’s a tightly packed shipment, they just read the sign.

Great moment of tension is whether we will be able to see football from any of the other big leagues in Europe. That’s, as I recall, a significant percentage of why you suffer through everything else. Imagine if something came from Italy! Free kicks from Platini or Maradona, bending around the wall, defy the laws of physics. Happiness!

One more life days like that, and then it doesn’t help to come to school on Monday and be retold by someone else, and then wait for an extended round of Sports, which takes place early the next day. Therefore, people cry hoarsely to get extended strength to stay up late on Sundays.

Dad has a strong one and the good theory that whoever is the presenter largely determines the content. Gunnar Grimstad, Jon Herwig Carlsen, Kjell Kristian Rike, Karen Marie Ellefsen, Terje Dalby, Rolf Hovden, Per Ståle Lønning, Sølve Grotmol and Knut Th. Gladitsch. Yes, also Arne Scheie. They are A-list celebrities, and they have power.

Gleditsch, Scheie and Hovden giving hope for more European football towards the end, while Herwig Carlsen means more Martin Schanche and Jim Martinsen on his way. Øyvind Johnsen is synonymous with dancing and figure skating. At least that’s how I remember it. But you see the whole commotion anyway, because it’s Sports Review. And because the alternative, at least on TV, one hundred percent doesn’t exist.

Then comes the future, as it so often does, and slapped the past in the face. With the advent of more channels and – eventually – satellite, internet and smartphones, the whole concept of a weekend revue, where you are prepared to wait for the results you already know, and have seen with live pictures, has become more or less futile. drain. Losing Sports Review in 2022 is like losing a telephone booth, a movie box, or a laser disc.

Live image of what you want to see is now available 24/7 to anyone with internet access or cellular coverage, and you can go straight to the sport you love and watch what you want, on YouTube, on Twitter, or even on the wonderful NRK online normal player. There may be separate channels for ski ballet, evening orienteering, and horses doing funny things with other horses. And even Arne Scheie didn’t think so inadequate sports on TV in 2022. Not even on NRK.

When NRK opens for the final package to each person employees, and say they should cut NOK 300 million from their pretty generous budget, maybe nostalgic sentimentality about how the world used to be shouldn’t be the first priority.

The crank should go down staffing. And in some places they have to earn money if we’re going to get the new season “Helene checks in at ______ (fill in the sad leftovers of what still hasn’t checked in)”, Christmas and Easter nuts with accompanying jokes, “Maskorama » or «Sophie and Fetisha». This is a harsh and merciless world.