We hope you didn’t book your plane tickets to Sochi for the Intervision Song Contest, because the party is over before it even started. Yes, Intervision has been postponed.
Producers in Russia had planned to revive Intervision—the Soviet-era Eurovision—this October. It was meant to be a heterosexual alternative to ESC, and a showcase of post-Soviet pop. Russia staged a national selection, chose Alexander Ivanov (who kind of looks like a young Evgeny Plushenko), and were waiting on China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to name their contestants. But, following an undisclosed “political situation”, the show is now slated for the spring of 2015. Looks like Putin is going to have to get his fix of Soviet-era nostalgia somewhere else for now.
Victor Drobysh, a producer and organizer of the Intervision Song Contest, told RUS Novositi, that a “political situation” had forced the delay. It’s unclear precisely what that situation is, but we can think of two possibilities.
1. The obvious “political” situation is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where Russia is accused of arming and training pro-Russian separatists. Intervision producers have said they are in talks with Belarus, Moldova and other former Soviet Republics to join the show. It seems like they’d be hesitant to join any cultural initiative led by Russia during these tense times.
2. The revived Intervision used the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as the framework for the contest. The SCO, which is seen as a counterweight to NATO and the EU, has grown in importance to Putin in the aftermath of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.
But targetting this group of countries is stirring uncomfortable feelings. Apparently some folks don’t like the fact Intervision uses part of the name of “Five Stars Intervision”, another musical contest. As News.ru explains, a Tajik woman named Takhmina Niyazovayu won the contest last year. “Thus the competition in 2014 should take place in Tajikstan,” the web site says. Is the “political” situation an issue of internal politics and using the Intervision name?
@ Bledar Leka
The Channel that is doing Intervision is Channel One, 75% owned by the government. That is why I think Intervision is going to get hit by the western sanctions. Also while there are other channels wh could take over Eurovision duties, all of them will have to make savings to host it if they win again during the economic and political situation.
@DR, I think that one of Russia’s EBU channels is a private channel. But I think that it’s because only 7 countries are participating out of the desired 19 eligible countries. Even Belarus and Kazakhstan don’t want to join it!
I think it is a economic problem. With the Western sanctions Russia’s stagnating economy is coughing the rouble is at its lowesy rate since it was reconstructed in 1998. Russia can’t really afford it at the moment. Lets hope they don’t win Eurovision, the arena might be a shed in red square, propably not, but there could be difficulties.
ABU TV Song Festival is on 25 October. I will watching. I am intrigued.
@Michael, every single? One time.
It’ll be like Türkvizyon or ABU TV Song Festival, where nobody watches it. I have friends in Turkey and Kosovo (Kosovo participated in Türkvizyon) and they said that they hadn’t even heard about it. It’s only Azerbaijan that’s serious about Türkvizyon. With the ABU TV Song Festival I have friends in Australia and Indonesia and apparently no body watches it. I assume it will be the same for Intsrvision, Putin’s way of declaring his control over Central Asia
@Archeops: And you are obsessed with being an apologist for Russia in every single post about Ukraine. We all have our proclivities…
William Lee Adams is obsessed with Putin. He just can’t write article about Russia without word “Putin”.