EBU has its press conference yesterday and some interesting provisional facts were announced about the next year's contest, wherever it will be:
- The provisional dates are May 14 and 16 for the semifinals, 18 for the final.
- Possible that future contests may be on a smaller scale and there may be
possible changes to rehearsal schedules to economise on time and
financial costs. This indeed sounds good. The venues don't work well if too big in my opinion (remember Denmark?) and kind of lose a bit of the feeling. Smaller is cosier and much more fun! Even when you look at it on TV. I think a venue with 15-20.000 is ideal. How they will shorten the rehearsal schedules? I have no idea. Longer days for everybody? This year's timetables were very friendly if you compare to Helsinki 2007 for example but on the other hand if you look country like Iceland, they have to be in Baku for over 2 weeks and that can't be very cheap!
- 60th anniversary is approaching in 2015 and looking at ways to celebrate
it, and discussions are taking place with various broadcasters
- Archive project on full speed. Digitalised and restored to obtain the
best copies of each year. First phase completed as we approach the 60th
contest in 2015. Can't wait for this!
- They have also apparently talked about the internal selections like they did already last year. Every country should let their people to have a say somehow, so at least they should be able to choose between songs, like Belgium this year, or the artist like Slovenia, or rather in both. EBU seems to favor a fully open selection in every country. If they could also introduce the rule that the artist and songwriters should be of the country they represent that would be fine with me! Or at least somehow connected to the country. Or that the same composer for example could participate in one country only per year....
This year Montenegro, Israel, San Marino, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Turkey, Slovakia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, United Kingdom, Azerbaijan, France and Italy gave their people no choice at all. Interestingly half of them made the final, half of them didn't so it's no longer a working so well for the semifinalists. Also 4 out of six Big5+1 chose to select their entry internally, only Spain letting people choose on the song (artists selected internally) and Germany did the other way: people chose the artists while the song(s) were selected internally but people still had the final say.
Comments