The European Broadcasting Union is reviewing the rules regarding which broadcasters are eligible to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest.
In a statement to ESCToday.com the European Broadcasting Union has stated that they are reviewing the rules regarding associate members participating in the Eurovision Song Contest. The statement reads as follows:
For the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest EBU Associates, such as Khabar Agency in Kazakhstan, were not eligible to take part in the Contest save for an exception made for SBS Australia. The EBU is reviewing these rules ahead of next year’s competition, and will publish the latest edition on the Eurovision.tv site in due course.
The statement has fueled speculation that the EBU may open up the contest to broadcasters who are associate members of the European Broadcasting Union. To date only Australia’s SBS has ever competed in the contest without being a full member of the European Broadcasting Union. SBS is an Associate Member of the EBU and was invited to compete in 2015 as part of the contests 60th anniversary, they have now gone on to become what appears to be an annual fixture in the contest.
If the EBU does allow associate members to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest it opens the door for Kazakhstan to compete. Kazakhstan has shown broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest annually through its associate member broadcaster, Khabar Agency. The Kazakh broadcaster has shown the contest annually since 2010 and has created specific website content to promote the contest.
Kosovo would still be unable to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest if the rules only enable associate members to compete. RTK the national broadcaster of Kosovo is an observer, but had key assistance from the EBU when it was setup in 2008, For Kosovo being eligible to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest has been the aim of RTK since independence in 2008. Kosovo has had the opportunity to compete in a Eurovision event, in 2011 the country participated in Eurovision Young Dancers in Oslo. Kosovo has broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest on a number of occasions between 2010 and 2016.
The full list of countries who would be eligible to compete if the contest allowed associate members to compete is as follows:
[tw-column width=”one-half”]- Australia
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Cuba
- Hong Kong
- India
- Iran
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- South Korea
- Malaysia
- Mauritius
- New Zealand
- Oman
- South Africa
- Syria
- United States
Please EBU don’t let associate members join! You’ll just ruin the contest and it’s tradition. Its called EUROvision there are a few countries not even in Europe competing which is bad enough but please not more. If they allow them to join I’m finished with eurovision 🙁 syria,south korea, Japan etc in eurovision? NO THANKS! oh my god I’m freaking out
+1
JUST Kazakhstan, please 🙂 I would love to see Kazakhstan as Kazakhstan is part of Europe (a small part) 😀 The EBU has to create an Euro-Asian contest with the ABU, which would be amazing! 🙂
I would like only Australia to continue – nothing else.
I have a suggestion: Australia should be eligible to take part since they’ve broadcast the countest for nearly 35 years and the interest is huge. Eurovision is already a global contest; Canada, the US, Argentina and China are just a few examples of countries broadcasting the event. Why not let them take part in a non-competitive way? Each of the broadcasters may send an artist to let him/her promote his/her music for the rest of Europe and the world. They may perform as an interval. There is proof that “Can’t Stop The Feeling” was highly promoted to others via Eurovision; it stayed at number 1 in the Swedish charts for weeks.
So to make a long history short, so to say; Let all associate member stations take part, but as a type of interval act, sending an artist to let him/her promote his/her music. 😀
You know what? I actually kinda like the idea of global stars being the interval act at Eurovision. This should happen every year. I was thinking that Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Britney Spears, Carly Rae Jepsen, Justin Bieber, or Nicki Minaj could be the interval act in Kiev. 🙂
only Kazakhstan should be able to participate as a normal european country. if other countries want to participate they participate in only one year. for exemple in 2017 Canada participates, in 2018 New Zealand and so on. It would be cool to have a (different) guest country every year, they would be already in the final as Australia 2015, to bring some music from other places. But don’t make eurovision a global contest, if the EBU wants to make a worldvision create a new contest and leave eurovision as it is now.
I hope that the contest allows associate members to compete.
yes finally the world songcontest i was hopping for 😉 welcome to all ….
I think the EBU will make a zone for the associate members that are allowed to compete. I’m assuming countries like Kazakhstan who have an interest in the contest, will be in this zone. 😀
How about this idea?
1. European Song Contest (remove Australia, keep Israel and add Liechtenstein)
2. Asian Song Contest (- Israel )
3. Americas Song Contest (+ Oceania)
4. African Song Contest
Top 5 (or 6) of all four contests (+ winner of previous year) compete in World Song Contest
The only good thing that would come of this would be in the United States if we were to take part the contest would have to air on CBS, ABC or NBC for us to be eligible. As long as Logo TV is our broadcaster we can’t enter because Logo TV isn’t an associate member.