People like to talk about civilization in Yles, but cultural and business programs are still lost, says Marjaana Mykkänen

“About civilization we are happy to talk at Yle, but culture and agendas have been hit by a genre ceiling. The task of public service media is to provide education, and Yle should be able to be turned to when information is needed to counterbalance entertainment.” Marjaana Mykkänen saddens.

Mykkänen has enough perspective to evaluate Yleisradio. He started as a journalist In the A studio in 1979. The first story was a report on the Kyläsaari alcoholic treatment facility. Mykkänen fell in love with film and working on the operating table.

Even Mykkänen’s parents had found each other on Fabianinkatu, at the door of Yle’s office. Mother worked there as a sound inspector, and father used to sing in a quartet. At least that’s what family legend says.

Mute studied information studies at the University of Helsinki but wanted something else. He applied to study journalism at Tampere University, Sorbonne in Paris and Columbia in New York.

Mykkänen ended up at Columbia, a top university. There they studied all the tools, including radio and television, and learned to do all kinds of stories on all kinds of topics.

“From there it went directly to the New York Times, the Washington Post and television, CBS or ABC. School was hard and educational. Foreign students were not admitted any easier than local students. I was left with fearlessness and lifelong friends.”

For example, Mykkänen met at the Columbia film school’s documentary course Melody to Londonwhich has since cut Jim Jarmuschin, by Laurie Anderson and Laura Poitrasin movies. In New York, Mykkänen especially went to jazz clubs.

Culture that is, in Finland, a lively teenage period in the 1980s, when Mykkänen had returned and was tuning up his career. Especially in Helsinki, music revolutionized urban culture.

Mykkänen directed concert recordings from Tavastia and Provinssirock. Some of the festival gigs were broadcast live, among others Iggy Pop ha Ramones.

Timo-Erkki Heinon, Janne Kuusen and Aki Kaurismäki with Mykkänen did Restless pieces -culture magazine, where creativity blossomed wildly.

“There were funny clips among the factual stuff. It’s a miracle that it was done. In general, I have been able to produce everything quite freely. Culture Thursday With light spots and many art series were realized when you were persistent and had the right kind of bosses and colleagues”, says Mykkänen.

“Now, the value of programs is too often determined by success in Yle Areena’s under-29 audience numbers. Culture and affairs programs don’t do well in those games.”

Culture has been the central topic of Mykkänen’s career, especially music. He has also made documentaries outside of Yle.

The most famous of them is the rock documentary Sickle and guitar (1988), which was filmed in Moscow in 1987–1988. It started at the Rockpanorama festival. At the time of glasnost, rock rose to the surface in the Soviet Union. The bands Nautilus Pompilius, Aquarium and Va-Bank were among others.

“It was a political documentary in many ways. As far as I know, the breakup of the Soviet Union was not exactly documented at the time. A sequel was planned 30 years later, when the main characters had ended up dissident from Putinism, but time ran out.”

Already in the 1980s, Mykkänen expanded his range from rock to classical. His last job was at Yle In the swing of the gods (2022). The documentary follows the giant project of the National Opera in which it was produced Wagner’s Ring– opera series. The conductors were Esa-Pekka Salonen and Susanna Mälkki.

It was a handsome climax to a long career at Yle. Mykkänen retired from there in 2022, after a career of more than 40 years.

If The swing of the gods was the end point of Mykkänen’s work, so was the doctoral thesis completed in 2020 The Good Television was a kind of financial statement. Mykkänen started doing it already in 2002.

“My first identity is a documentarian, but my second identity is a researcher. The dissertation took longer because I was doing other things and had to learn how to research. But I wanted to use the knowledge accumulated over a long career that others don’t have. And information must be produced in order to discuss Yle’s future.”

In his dissertation, Mykkänen investigated the changes in the program offering and the importance of Afia programs for audiences. Yle produces a lot of research information about its own programs and operations. Mykkänen was able to use it as a researcher, but hopes that it will be opened to the public more widely.

Mute notes that at the beginning of the 2000s, Yle’s cultural offerings were at their widest and now narrower than ever. 20 years ago, Yle Teema was an educational, cultural and scientific channel. Mykkänen would like to return to it.

“Yle reaches 95 percent of Finns every week, and its audience share on TV is over 44 percent. It has great power over people’s minds,” he says.

“The presence of culture on Yle’s platforms would support the vitality of art. According to research, it is young people who need information and education from Yle. Yle not only reflects society but also shapes it.”

It seems dark that Yle is shrinking its cultural offering itself otherwise than under the pressure of budget cuts. Recently attracted attention At heart– ending the folk music program on the radio.

You can find all kinds of good things at Mykkänen Yle.

“Yle is valuable and necessary for society in many ways. Many great individual things are done there.”

Recently, Mykkä has been delighted by, for example, the Teema film festival and the documentary series Meeri Koutaniemi, out of the picture.