Over the years many countries have ended up withdrawing their entry from Eurovision for a variety of reasons. Be that France’s 1974 entry, La Vie A Vingt-cinq Ans, which was withdrawn following the death of the French president; Lebanon’s 2005 entry, Quand tout s’enfuit, which was pulled after the Lebanese broadcaster was told they must broadcast the Israeli entry or how about Ukraine’s Siren Song from 2019, withdrawn after the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC) could not get their national final contestants to agree to sign the terms of their Eurovision contract due to political tensions with Crimea, Eurovision has seen it all.
That is of course to name merely a few examples of withdrawn entries and when you consider the vast back-catalogue of disqualified Eurovision entries the contest has rejected… Well all I will say is there is enough to keep you entertained for a while!
But what never fails to amaze me is the ways in which the contest has managed to develop and improve on itself after each pulled song ‘drama’ (in many ways this is a continuation from the ideas in my post on Eurovision controversies from earlier this year). The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has seen the contest grow in spectacular fashion over the years and with each new addition, new opportunities and challenges arise! Never was this more apparent than in 2020 – the year of Coronavirus.
The only year (hopefully ever) that Eurovision was removed from the TV schedules must have come as a massive shock and a large blow to the EBU. Months of preparations for one of their biggest projects of the year up in smoke. To make matters worse there was no clear defined time as to when the pandemic would end and how that would impact all their plans in the coming year(s) either. Sweden’s track Move sung about overcoming obstacles and whilst the EBU unfortunately could not find a solution to get them to Eurovision, with countries imposing strict travel bans indefinitely the EBU had to strategise on just how they were going to move Heaven and Earth to get the contest rolling in 2021.
“There ain’t no mountain, Baby that I wouldn’t move…. We’re moving mountains”
The Mamas (Sweden 2019 (as backing vocalists) and Sweden 2020)
One such marvel of modern technology, ever connecting and uniting the world is that the contest’s growth only real limitation these days on the contest’s number of participants (and by extension who those participants are) is the rulebook decided upon by the EBU themselves. This has allowed long-standing friends of the contest Australia to be able to fly over participants and broadcast the show live in a way that simply would have been unprecedented back in 1956 when the contest was first established. Australia have since delighted us with numerous high quality songs, delightful spokesperson’s, a new national final… You get the point, they have added so much already. However with Coronavirus, leaving the island nation with an ever stricter border control policy, broadcasting challenges re-emerged. The EBU and Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) had a problem… How would they get Australian participant Montaigne to Eurovision?
If you are reading this blog in 2021, you likely know the answer, satellites (Lena really left that big of an impact) but the point of this piece is less about that and more about what this means for the contest moving forward. And of course if you are knew to Eurovision or reading this in the distant future (I really kept the site active this long?) then there is your answer. The point is though, having a singer be able to perform from a different venue, while less than ideal is a pretty revolutionary concept for the contest.
This notion first came about in 2017 in response to a different but similar problem. As the geopolitical tensions continued between Russia and Ukraine over the status of Crimea, the Ukrainian government decided to introduce a travel ban preventing entry to Ukraine for anyone who had (in their eyes illegally) crossed into Crimea over what they considered to be the Russian border. As Ukraine was hosting the 2017 contest and Russian participant Julia Samoylova had previously performed concerts in Crimea, the EBU were left puzzling over a solution to allow her to compete without breeching Ukrainian law – thereby avoiding any potential political drama. Despite Russia ultimately declining the EBU’s offer, the EBU did reach an agreement on how this could be done – bingo, satellites! Whilst many of the official rules that would have to have been amended were not publicly brought forward at the time, it is amusing to reflect back on the situation and consider that this very notion did eventually end up being utilised.
- “in the country of the Host Broadcaster. The Acts are performed during the Shows in front of a live audience”
- “The Shows are produced and transmitted live by the Host Broadcaster”
- “The stage performance shall be identical in all second Dress Rehearsals and during the live Shows”
Conflict number one centralises around the notion that the contest involves live performances which should all occur in the same place in front of the public for matters of fairness. In order to solve this problem the EBU had to decide on the number of takes a country could have to film these performances, they then had to determine what technological set-up would or would not be suitable to be used in a satellite performance and who would oversee the upholding of these rules.
Conflict number two is similar but is more focused on ensuring that the performances were all collated with the host broadcaster for ease of broadcast and that they could be fitted into the show in a way that is not disjointed, despite coming from all around the world.
Finally conflict number three revolves around TV production and allowing the EBU to do their job in producing a high quality TV show. The rule ensures the EBU knows what is expected to occur on stage at all times and has the added bonus of allowing them to act quicker if something goes wrong. Depending on how soon the EBU received the transmissions of these performances the EBU may have issues ensuring everything in them was above board.
So how did the EBU solve these conflicts? First of all, they set the number of takes the broadcasters could have for their performance to three. These three performances gave acts the chance to have rehearsals on the stage they would be using but also limited the takes to better simulate a live situation. They also required the head of delegation and a live-link call to the EBU to be present during the filming of these sessions to oversee the events. On top of this the performances all had to be delivered to the EBU by March (in other words two months before the contest) ensuring both that the artists would not end up ill by the time their back-up performances were due and that the EBU had all the recordings at hand, ready to create an impactful TV show with.
Similarly, 2017 also saw another similar issue to these rules that the EBU had to create a workaround for that was again needed in 2021. Portugal’s only winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, Salvador Sobral was also having issues being able to attend the contest in Ukraine. As he was yet to have surgery for his heart condition, the prospect of flying to Ukraine for a few weeks in order to attend all the rehearsals for the contest was simply not feasible and if the EBU hadn’t altered their rule (presented as conflict three) by letting his sister perform essentially a stand-in dress rehearsal for him, the contest’s biggest landslide win would never have occurred. In 2021, San Marino had this very same problem with travel restrictions in the United States of America left Flo Rida with a tight window in order to make it to the contest. Once again the EBU allowing a stand-in performer at the rehearsal allowed for a historic moment in the contest to occur.
What can we learn from all this then?
First of all, it is worth noting that even with something like a televised song contest it is important to reflect on history and learn from it. Problems of the past can resurface in unexpected ways and being willing to learn from previous strengths and weakness is the best way to grow. Secondly, whilst it is great that we can strive for perfection at Eurovision (and I am sure you want the standard Eurovision’s of the past back without the fear of Coronavirus) sometimes it isn’t needed and compromise can benefit us in unexpected ways. Thirdly, Eurovision is at its best when it is ever adapting, ever learning and I hope the Eurovision Reference Group look back at this year’s contest and see the benefits a slightly more flexible approach can have at the contest and use that to influence decisions moving forward.
As always, thank you for being the amazing Eurovision community you are, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these matters! Comments are always open on the site and we have social media pages to if you want to say ‘hi’. And if you are just dying to share this article with a friend (or even if you are not) I hope you consider clicking one of the links below and adding a little more Eurovision content to someone’s day. Until next time, have a great day!