Big TV Events Are “Useful” In Many Ways

Michael Hedges June 6, 2011 Follow on Twitter

Hosting a major televised entertainment event is an opportunity beyond compare for nations big and small. That international spotlight brings lots of attention. It can be “a golden opportunity.”

More than 110 million people watched all or part of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) telecasts this past May.  It has long been a major international entertainment event, ranking in audience along big sports championships and finals. Winning the ESC this year was a singing duo from Azerbaijan. (See EBU Eurovision statement here)

The ESC has grown from a seven-country contest and one hour broadcast in 1956 to a week-long extravaganza with seven and a half hours of TV time and contestants from 43 countries. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) runs tight control over ESC participation, one requirement being active EBU membership of a broadcaster within the 56 Council of Europe member states. Typically these are “public service broadcasters,” in the EBU’s definition. Some are unreconstructed state controlled institutions.

Unlike the Olympic Games, football championships and Formula 1, which choose venues by the weight of baskets of cash, hosting the ESC is part of the prize winnings. Only a few, five in the ESC’s history, have begged off because of the expense. As noted before (see longer version here), the Eurovision Song Contest may be a bit cheesy but it ain’t cheap.

Host countries look upon these events, whether the ESC, the Olympic Games or football championships, as opportunities to generate salutary international attention and sizable tourist traffic. Most presume some long-term benefits, from building new venues to increasing hotel space. When host countries are emerging or transitional States, some hope for benefits to a greater good, from advancing human rights and the rule of law to improving media freedom and promoting democratic ideals.

The Eurovision Song Contest, tempting to dismiss as tacky, seems to have a lasting positive effect on some of those idealistic values, perhaps better than other big international televised entertainment events. The Beijing Olympic Games hardly moved the Chinese leadership while the FIFA World Cup in South Africa rallied the nation to many reforms. Bahrain’s Formula 1 Grand Prix event had to be rescheduled due to “civil unrest.”

In the last decade or so the ESC has been hosted in six countries that can be considered emerging, developing or transitional: former Soviet states Estonia (2002), Latvia (2003), Ukraine (2005) and Russia (2009), proposed EU candidates Turkey (2004) and Serbia (2008). Azerbaijan will host the 2012 ESC events, a former Soviet State and the first ESC host in the Caucasus. Over the course of the last decade press freedom, as charted by Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF) and Freedom House, has improved in about half the countries hosting the ESC, Serbia and Ukraine the most.

Public broadcasting in Azerbaijan had its official beginning in 2004 when President Ilham Aliyev signed the Law on Public Television and Radio Broadcasting, essentially taking over most of State radio and TV. The statute says it “shall be organized as an independent legal entity functioning for the provision of public broadcasting service.” Ictimai Television and Radio (ITV) operates one radio and one TV channel. There is a separate State operated TV channel AzTV. ITV is the EBU member, allowing it to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest, while AzTV is not. Privately owned television channels in Azerbaijan are, typically, government friendly.

There is an “abundance” of media choices in Azerbaijan, reported IREX in its Media Sustainability Index (March 2011). More than 400 outlets – a mix of State, public and private newspapers, radio stations, TV channels and online portals – provide a relatively wide range of media content. State influence is taken for granted, particularly in broadcasting. Newspapers have more freedom and the online media community is diverse and popular. Social media is all the rage; nearly 400,000 Azeris are “on” Facebook. IREX rates Azeri media as an “unsustainable, mixed system.”

Only one journalist was “still” in prison at the time of the IREX report. Azeri newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev was “unexpectedly” released from prison (May 26) after four years. Others among Azerbaijan’s media and human rights watchers asked for more.

“The final of Eurovision 2012 will be held in Baku and will attract the attention of the world to both the contest itself and to Azerbaijan as a whole,” said an open letter to President Aliyev (May 27). “Therefore, we would like to draw your attention to the tense civil rights situation in the country, including violations of freedom of speech, assembly and association, and especially the issue of political prisoners, which is noted by local and international human rights organizations. This is the alarming situation of the background against which Eurovision 2012 will be held in Baku.”

After the ESC victory for Azeri singers Eldar “Ell” Gasimov and Nigar “Nikki” Jamal, Ictimai TV General Director Ismayil Omarov promised “the most beautiful, grandest contest” in May 2012. There’s talk of a new theater venue. The Baku airport, slated for replacement in 2013, will be upgraded with a new terminal and longer runways.

The ESC does bring a crowd. More than 30,000 people attended the Düsseldorf final show, including 2,000 from the news media. Then there are the participants, their managers, agents, make-up artists and the Eurovision officials and crews. Government officials said a simplified visa process would be in place, likely similar to ticket-holder visa system used when the ESC was hosted in Moscow in 2009.  And visas will be extended to visitors and participants from Armenia. Hotel prices, they said, would be “monitored.”

It is, of course, a tall undertaking and altogether similar to bursts of energy felt whenever major television entertainment events come to developing nations. Hosting the ESC in Baku is “a golden opportunity for Azerbaijan to show to the world the resolute and sweeping modernization of its society,” said Ambassador Roland Kobia, Head of Delegation of the European Union to Azerbaijan, before a conference on the EU’s Eastern Partnership program (May 18). “It is a golden chance because all attention will be directed to Azerbaijan.” Azerbaijan’s president is known for attention to the detail of public relations.

There is, it seems, no end to interest in hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. “I believe that Azerbaijan’s experience will be useful to Belarusian participants of Eurovision…(and)…will bring long-awaited success to Belarus,” said the notoriously media unfriendly Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko as he congratulated Azeri President Aliyev (May 24).

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