The organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) have launched a brand new director function following an impartial report into this yr’s competitors. It has additionally been beneficial the competition, which is organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), appoint a welfare producer to make sure contestants’ wellbeing.
The brand new ESC director will report back to the EBU’s deputy director normal and media director Jean Philip De Tender. They can even oversee the present’s govt supervisor Martin Österdahl. The brand new director, who has not but been appointed, can even oversee one other new function, the top of ESC model and business, which can also be but to be recruited.
In an interview with Selection in regards to the report, De Tender stated that the EBU will now seek the advice of its specialists and members to find out whether or not the competition will appoint a welfare producer or implement another approach of supporting the welfare of contestants.
“The Eurovision Music Contest is the largest leisure [platform] on the earth,” De Tender stated. “In case you’re Taylor Swift, you are taking your time to grow to be [as big as] Taylor Swift. While you’re chosen to participate within the Eurovision Music Contest, instantly, most often, an artist which isn’t that well-known on a European or a worldwide degree, instantly you stand on that on that stage. And what we’ve realized is that we have to higher put together the entire artists.”
A part of the modifications that will likely be carried out can even embrace making certain that artists, theirs delegations and residential broadcasters are extra conscious of the foundations and duties they comply with abide by when collaborating within the contest – together with their conduct in direction of fellow contestants. “Now we have an obligation of look after the artists as nicely but in addition the artists want to grasp that should you take part within the Eurovision Music Contest, what are the foundations you’re contracting to?” De Tender stated.
In Might, the EBU, which runs the competition, revealed they might be appointing an impartial business professional to evaluate this yr’s contest following a handful of controversies, together with the expulsion of Netherlands entry Joost Klein on the morning of the Grand Finale for allegedly threatening a feminine crew member and the reported bullying of Israeli entry Eden Golan by fellow contestants.
Pernille Gaardbo, the professional behind the report, spoke to greater than 50 individuals to arrange the advice, together with a spread of Eurovision stakeholders such because the heads of the delegations from every nation, members of the competition’s governing board and the EBU/ESC core crew, to evaluate what may very well be completed otherwise because the occasion heads into its seventieth anniversary subsequent yr.
“The EBU is a non-political organisation or a union of public service media broadcasters in Europe,” De Tender stated. “So what we carry is a non-political occasion. However clearly as a result of the occasion has grow to be so massive, you see that geopolitical tensions can have an effect on the occasion, that it could possibly have an effect on the artists. We welcome freedom of speech. Now we have seen [the] demonstrations in Malmo [against the participation of Israel in the contest following the conflict in the Middle East]. As public service media, it’s essential that folks can categorical opinions and views. However the Eurovision Music Contest is non-political and wishes to stay non-political.”
“We have to look in reviewing the foundations in addition to how doubtlessly we will discover new methods in mitigating the affect of those exterior occasions,” he added. “What we now have been doing may be very a lot in keeping with what worldwide sports activities federations have been doing. Now we have the Olympics, which can kick off in a few weeks, the place precisely the identical insurance policies have been adopted as what the EBU has been doing for the Eurovision Music Contest.”
Different suggestions made within the report, which can now be thought of by a taskforce of senior leaders throughout the EBU, embrace doubtlessly limiting backstage entry and likewise placing collectively a devoted disaster administration crew.
In a press release accompanying the suggestions, the EBU stated: “We’re dedicated to making sure that the Eurovision Music Contest continues to go from power to power and that each one stakeholders, not least collaborating broadcasters and the hundreds of thousands who benefit from the occasion, could be reassured of our greatest intentions to take care of the success of this occasion that brings a lot pleasure to hundreds of thousands around the globe.”
For De Tender, who’s already trying forward in direction of subsequent yr’s contest in Switzerland, the report is about “futureproofing” the competition so it could possibly proceed to carry pleasure to future generations by music. “We’ve seen on stage international locations at conflict nearly embracing each other as a result of this stage is apolitical,” he stated. “So it reveals that it’s about respecting each other, respecting the variety and respecting the inclusion.”
