Category: Work

Last week was a rather overwhelming experience for me as the new Media Director of the EBU. As I am now responsible for all media content, that also includes the Eurovision Song Contest. Not something I knew very much about beforehand, but I have surely learned. A lot.
Tuesday evening I arrived in Baku, and went more or less straight to the large arena called Crystal Hall for the first semi final. It was a fantastic experience.The Crystal Hall was packed, almost sold out, which is very unusual for a semi final. The audience was alive with the show through every minute of it, cheering, clapping, singing, waving their flags. Exactly as it should be.
The first semi final was followed by an equally spectacular second semi final and then, at last, the grand final on Saturday. Glizzy, yes, but absolutely not overly so. It was extremely professionally done.Everything worked. Security, technical arrangements, content, the broadcast. An event to be proud of, and even more so, quite an achievement from everybody involved.
The ESC has always been very much discussed and often hotly debated. It has been questioned and challenged, it has had its rules and procedures changed many times. But never before has there been as much debate and press attention around the contest as this year. It seems to me that every single aspect of the contest has been scrutinized and talked about in the media. The size of the event and the cost of it has been discussed. Can it be downsized without loosing its soul and its spirit? Can we manage even more countries? What if the winning country cannot arrange the contest the following year? Rules, procedures, the lyrics, the songs, what is allowed and what is not allowed, why the rules the way they are – all these things have been talked about and have required attention and decisions. But all this is quite normal. What has not been normal at all is the
political discussion. The ESC has been set in politically sensitive times before, but never before has the debate been as heated as this year. To be in Azerbaijan, a country still at war with its neighbour Armenia is controversial in itself, and has demanded quite a balancing act. But the fact that Azerbaijan has such a poor trackrecord when it comes to human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of press has added significantly to the pressure. Both on the country itself and on the EBU.
For us this has been an experience which has thaught us a lot. We have learned about how it is to work in other cultures, we have learned about what we want to be as an organization. We will not leave Azerbaijan with this, but we will return and continue to work together with Ictimai, trying to see what we can do together to improve freedom of speech and press freedom. A work that we will do in also in many other countries with similar problems.
The Eruovision Song Contest 2012 was, in spite of everything, a smashing success. Loreen from Sweden won, very convincngly. The success is above all thanks to the dedicated team – no one mentioned, no one forgotten – that has worked long and hard to make everything work. To them belongs the biggest THANK YOU.

Annika

PS Loreen at the press conference at 4.30 in the morning DS