The world's largest live-for-broadcast music event, the Eurovision Song Contest, is celebrating its 70th anniversary with the announcement of a new version of the competition in Asia. Eurovision, which routinely gets between 166 and 200 million live viewers compared with a record of 134 million for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, will host the final of the competition in Bangkok on November 14, six months after the European version which takes place in May in Vienna, Austria.
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In the official announcement, Martin Green, director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said, “As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, it feels especially meaningful to open this next chapter with Asia, a region rich in culture, creativity and talent.”
The original Eurovision gets its name from the partnership between European television networks, and was started after the second world war to promote relations between countries. Each country hosts its own competition for a band or artist to represent them, and those "delegates" attend two semi-finals and a final in the home country of the act that won the previous year. This guarantees the TV companies huge ratings for both the national competition and three nights of the finals of the international contest. Winners are chosen by votes from both a panel of professionals in each country and by popular vote using the Eurovision app or phone voting.
There is clearly a worldwide audience for the Eurovision Song Contest, which is reflected in the participation of countries outside Europe, including Australia, Israel, and Morocco, however, a US-based version of the competition, the American Song Contest, was canceled after one season.
Eurovision is known for extraordinarily high production values and attracts some of the most respected professionals in set design (Florian Wieder) lighting (Tim Routledge, Fredrik Stormby) and, of course, veteran head of production/senior technical director Ola Melzig who has shepherded the event more than a dozen times. Many countries take the opportunity to showcase their talent so seriously they a delegate can arrive at Eurovision with a design already in place from an international designer--as was the case with the winning act Loreen who won for the second time with a production design for her three-minute performance by created Tobias Rylander.
Delegates in the European version range from 25 to 36 countries depending on the year; so far, ten networks in Asia have signed on with many more expected. Currently, China and Japan have not announced participation but music heavyweight South Korea, home to the global phenomena that is KPop, is involved.
Participating countries so far:
Bangladesh - NTV
Bhutan - Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS)
Cambodia - TV5 Cambodia
Laos - Vientiane Capital Television (VTE9)
Malaysia - Media Prima (TV3)
Nepal - Himalaya TV
Philippines - ABS-CBN
South Korea - produced by PK Inc
Thailand (Host) - Channel 3
Vietnam - Vietnam Television (VTV3) not signed on,
Interestingly, Eurovision in Europe relies on public broadcasters like the BBC in the UK, partly because state-owned broadcasters were the only ones around 70 years ago when TV was in its infancy and the competition was started. However, the Asian version of the competition will be much more commercial and open to any broadcasters. It is, however, following the European model in so far as there are multiple countries/broadcasters supporting it. This is a wise move as although there are probably several factors why the US version of the contest failed, (too close in style to existing music competitions like The Voice and American Idol, for example) the main reason was it lost support of the one network supporting it, NBC.