I've been experimenting with the xml-to-json function, but for some reason my output is escaped. Why is that?

Stylesheet:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
B B B xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:f="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions" version="3.0">
B B B <xsl:output encoding="UTF-8" method="json"/>
B B B <xsl:template match="/">
B B B B B B B <xsl:variable name="transformed">
B B B B B B B B B B B <xsl:apply-templates select="programs"/>
B B B B B B B </xsl:variable>
B B B B B B B <xsl:value-of select="xml-to-json($transformed, map{'indent': true()})"/>