EBU Press Conference

ESC Today:

Amongst some of the details:

In addition to the 38 voting countries, the programme will be broadcast in Australia, Austria, Kosovo, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The semifinal will be 2 hours 15 minutes. The final 3 hours 5 minutes. Last year the final lasted about 3 hours 30 minutes, with the voting taking up 68 minutes. It was felt the programme lost pace, making it long and boring.

There will be three breaks in both the semifinal and Final.

The ten finalists qualifying from the semifinal will be revealed in a random draw of the envelopes. The ranking order will not be announced until after the transmission of the Final on 20th May.

The reason for the additional draw for the voting order was technical, in order to set up the satellite links, it really is too late to do it on Friday, once the final running order is known. The hosts will keep the audience updated, for example, we still have 15 countries to go. It will also be displayed graphically, so the audience know where they are in the voting order.

A maximum of 20 calls from any one telephone number can be made for any one song, although as many songs can be voted upon by a caller. This system is in place in most, but not ALL countries.

The contest will be produced in HDTV - High Definition Television. But broadcast only in Standard Definition. This is because there are not enough viewers yet with HDTV, but it will be good to have in the archives as HDTV. Perhaps next year they will make the final step towards broadcasting in HDTV.

Contest more popular amongst companies and sponsorship. 76% of the fees will be returned to the broadcasters.

Provisional dates for the 2007 contest: Semifinal 10th May, Final 12th May. the reason for the earlier dates are because of other commitments, such as sporting events, holidays etc amongst EBU members.

ERT will also present the winner with a limousine, as well as the awards.

14 countries will qualify for the 2007, just as it has been the last two years. Although changes were discussed, it was decided to keep it the same. This was due to logistics for rehearsals. The limit of 40 countries is still in place for the present.