Eurovision loses voice as financial cold spreads
Date December 2, 2012
Thin competition ... this year's Eurovision. Above, Russia's Buranovo Grannies last year. Photo: AFP
ONE after another they are calling in sick. First, Portugal and Poland and now, short of an economic miracle, Cyprus and Greece. For an event meant to unify Europe, next year's Eurovision song contest is starting to look unusually thin on the ground.
All four countries announced this week, or intimated strongly, that they would not take part. With the exception of Warsaw, each cited the debt crisis.
''It's a great shame,'' said the Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, who was discovered when she performed A Force de Prier, Luxembourg's entry in 1963. ''I couldn't perform for Greece back then as we didn't have television … I know the world progresses,'' she said, ''but the whole thing has just got so big, so expensive.''
That is why the competition associated with kitsch costumes and iffy music has had to take a back seat for recession-hit nations. Amid the business of meeting budget targets, there is no room for froth or frizz.
''Public television ought not to participate in this year's Eurovision contest in correspondence with overwhelming public sentiment,'' a Greek government spokesman, Simos Kedikoglou, said. ''It is very unlikely that Greece will take part.''
Officials insisted it would be ''distasteful'' to be seen to be competing in a contest ''that is all about sequins and stage effects''.
''It's not just that we don't have the money to pay for the broadcasting rights and participation fees which, at €120,000 [$150,000], we simply don't have. At this juncture, it would be morally wrong,'' an official at the state-controlled channel said.
In Cyprus, whose financial woes were triggered by its banking sector's exposure to Greece, the state broadcaster PIK described participation as a ''possibly provocative'' move.
Poland issued a statement saying: ''After a very careful analysis we made the difficult decision not to take part in the contest in Malmo.''
Organisers say 38 countries have signed up for the event. But Mouskouri's agent, Yannis Koutrakis, said: ''You've got so many countries, like Azerbaijan and Georgia, that are not exactly European, which are now participating.''
''If countries at the heart of Europe leave, then what is left? Is it really a European song contest?''
