YLE plans election night coverage from unfinished Music Centre
The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) wants to broadcast its coverage of the night of the next Parliamentary elections from the new Music Centre in Helsinki.
Jouni Kemppainen, editor-in-chief of the news department of YLE, wrote in the company’s intranet recently that the department is prepared to broadcast part of the coverage from some location in the centre of Helsinki.
Kemppainen says that it is possible that some of the programming will be broadcast from the Music Centre, which is still being built.
“Although the Music Centre will still be unfinished then, an area could be made ready there from where it is possible to broadcast some of the election coverage”, Kemppainen wrote.
He also expressed the hope that YLE would be able to bring together party leaders at some point in the evening.
“It is important for the citizens, and for Finnish democracy, to get the chairs of the parties together in one place.”
Live election night coverage has been held at the Iso Paja ("Big Workshop") building at YLE headquarters in Helsinki ever since the Presidential elections of 1994.
Now that tradition would seem to be coming to an end. The news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti wrote last week that the large parties do not want to take part in the event.
While he is not worried about what the parties may decide, Kemppainen noted that YLE would have liked to have continued broadcasting election coverage from Pasila.
Social Democratic Party Secretary Mikael Jungner, formerly the CEO of YLE, said to Suomen Kuvalehti that the party’s chairwoman Jutta Urpilainen would not be going to Pasila on election night, and he expects that the leaders of several other parties would also not take part in the event.
Centre Party Secretary Timo Laaninen also came out in favour of scattering the election coverage broadcasts to cover events of each individual party, which the media could cover separately.
“There has been some general dissatisfaction. We do not want to be the free programme producers of one company”, Laaninen told Suomen Kuvalehti.
The election night coverage with the main YLE building as its focal point usually brings in high viewer ratings.
In the last Parliamentary elections, the estimated viewership was about a million, which mens that nearly one in five Finns watched the YLE election broadcast.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 6.9.2010 - TODAY |
 YLE plans election night coverage from unfinished Music Centre
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