The end of June marked the 20th anniversary of my first broadcast on Finnish national television, meaning I’ve worked in the creative & media industry for 20 years.
Hosting interactive TV shows could be grueling – the night-time broadcasts were up to 8 hours long – but taught valuable lessons about performing, improvisation, production, working with the camera, and so much more. Most of all, it was so much fun. I remember this time in my life fondly.
Some highlights from working on TV
Throwing out a drunk C-list rock band minutes before going live. Bombing an audition with a Finnish pop star. Having to talk out of my ass for 45 minutes because the messaging system crashed mid-broadcast. Fans mailing everything from panties to religious books. The one time I filled in on a late-night quiz show, we had the producer live-dub my voice in broken Spanish as a joke.
Everyone in the old crew has moved on to other things, but I’m happy that we still get together every now and then. The last time we did, we discussed how the profession of “chat hosts” no longer exists. But I also like to think we were proto-Twitch streamers, and it’s all just the evolution of entertainment. It’s actually funny that nowadays you get better green-screen effects on a smartphone than in mainstream media in the aughts.
My last broadcast was on Valentine’s Day 2009. I was also working on the radio and online team at MTV3 News and Radio Nova, studying, and my daughter was due in a couple of weeks. It was time to move on. I documented my last night on TV in a way that’s NOT CRINGY AT ALL, but at least it was meatier than my blog entry after my first show.
Not much to look at
Unfortunately, only a handful of clips exist as evidence of my career. This was before completely digital broadcasting and automatic cloud storage, so recording everything for future generations wasn’t a priority. All the clips I managed to snag for myself are in glorious 360p.
The broadcasts were sometimes saved on DVDs, but they were mostly “stored” in the producer’s bin. It’s a shame I don’t have longer clips – I don’t know if I had anything interesting to say or said it in an interesting way, but at least my monotone rambles would be an ASMR gold mine nowadays.
Nevertheless, here’s a quick sample to celebrate this anniversary.
