North Broadcasting Union • Official Announcements

[Jan]

Malta and Switzerland no longer able to take 50% foreign artists.

Today, after long discussions, the NBU Council decided to remove the rule, that Malta and Switzerland could use 50% foreign acts in their national selection, while other countries only were able to use one.
The NBU council was convinced that both countries, Malta and Switzerland have enough native singers and that the use of foreign acts is now balanced and more fair.
The rule will be removed starting from the eighth edition.

[Deleted]

Breaking News!

On January 2nd, the NBU voted and made the decision to overturn their rejections of Tunisia and Algeria to be apart of the NBU. This means that both Algeria and Tunisia will be able to become active members and participate in the North Vision Song Contest starting the 8th edition!

The NBU states that their decision was based on the popularity of North Vision in Lebanon and the Lebanese victory.

Due to a low number of singers, both Algeria and Tunisia can use musicians with descent of their country without having a national selection. Cheb Khaled's song "C'est la vie" isn't eligible to enter North Vision.

Please welcome the new members, Algeria and Tunisia

[Daniel]

Broadcasters' Threads Online!

Today, the National Selections thread has been removed and has

been replaced with the broadcasters' threads, which make it easier

for broadcasters to manage their announcements without getting

page behind. Also it makes a whole new overview for users that

want to vote in National Selections.

The whole work took 4 hours. We hope you appreciate and use it!

Please remember that you still need to confirm on the
usual confirmation threads. Only your NS's and other threads
have to be done on your own broadcasters' page.

[Jan]

NVSC will have an 'official' YT channel!

Starting from NVSC #7, NVSC will have its own YouTube channel, where each song will be uploaded individually.

As there will be many copyright issues, either some videos will be mirrored or some audios will be pitched.
Sorry, but that's how it is.

- If you want me to upload your NVSC #7 song already (kept private of course), send me a PM with your entry! -
(unless you're holding a NS)

Click here to go to the channel and subscribe!

[Rick]

RTL.lu and Luxembourg are withdrawing from Northvision!

Tonight, a spokesperson from RTL.lu has stated that Luxembourg will withdraw from the upcoming edition(s) of Northvision Song Contest unless they will find a new Head of Delegation. He also stated that the withdrawal has nothing to do with bad results or lack of views, as the final was the third most viewed one after Northvision #4's and #5's finals. The NBU rulesbook states clearly that every country has to have a Head of Delegation in order to organize eventual National Selections, National Events, Promoting the Entry of the respective country and organize the live performance of the artists; things that Luxembourg seems to lack of at the moment. However, if a HoD is found in time, Luxembourg might be present again on the NVSC scene quite soon. 





News by BBC and the NBU Council!


Right after the winner was announced, the BBC has stated that they will provide to host the next edition and will find a way to involve all people from Europe in it. The Northvision Song Contest is very massive in the United Kingdom, has a big fan-base, and millions of people watched all the three events of this edition. BBC is glad to announce that NVSC #7 will register a huge record of 50 countries taking part in the edition, of course, so far. 

Afterwards, the NBU Council imposed the deadline for the broadcaster to confirm their participation, which is on Saturday, January the 19th. The deadline for announcing the songs and the artists for Northvision #7 will be on Saturday, February the 8th instead. Stay tuned for more infos from the NBU Council!

[Jan]

A record of 51 participants in NVSC #7!

Today, 19 January, the deadline passed to confirm for the seventh edition of North Vision Song Contest in the United Kingdom.
A record of fifty-one countries have confirmed their participation with Armenia, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and Turkey returning. The Netherlands have confirmed their participation in the very last minute. On 16 January, Luxembourg's withdrawal had been announced.

[Rick]

Introducing the Pre-Qualifying Round

The Northvision Song Contest is predicted to face even more countries to join the NBU in the near future, and in the best of the scenarios, the contest will have Semifinals with more than 24/25 countries in each. To avoid this, the NBU had a last-minute meeting and decided to introduce a new rule for the contest.

What is it? 

The PQR (Pre-Qualifying Round) is another event that will be held replacing the old Northvision In Concert. The event will be made up by 10 countries at the end, the last 5 placed from each semifinal. Those countries will send their song, and will battle for only 2 tickets for the actual contest. The other remaining 8 countries won't be able to join in the next edition, but they will return to compete after that edition. The two lucky countries will be so qualified and drawn in the semifinals, and will compete with the same song they did perform in the PQR. So at the end, if NVSC has 54 countries who take part in an edition, with the PQR only 46 will remain. A country can't remain stuck in the PQR for more than one edition, so in the next competition, the country will join again NVSC, because there are already other countries to join the PQR. 

Here's a picture explaining the situation:



If a semifinal has 22 countries, the countries to get into the PQR would be the ones who got the 22nd, 21st, 20th, 19th and 18th places (In both semifinals). If a country among these withdraws, the 17th place will take its place and so on. 


What are the good things of this new rule?

With 24/25 countries in a semifinal, it gets very difficult to get a spot for the final when there can be only 10 qualifiers. A "third" semifinal wouldn't have effect either, because then the NBU would be forced to reduce the number of qualifiers to 6 or 7. 
Then, in order to avoid a bad placement, all the countries would send songs with an higher overall quality, making the competition even more exciting!

How does it take place?

The PQR will take place replacing the Northvision In Concert, so the host will be chosen by a poll before. The host can't be any of the 10 countries participating countries for obvious reasons. In the PQR only the 10 countries are able to vote. The logo of the competition, the place and the venue will be all chosen by the host broadcaster while the schedule will be given by the NBU.

[Rick]

New measures for the foreign acts taken

Many artists outside Europe have many times expressed their wishes to perform on Europe's favourite TV show, but yet, some broadcasters seem to prefer them instead of their own artists. The NBU council had a recent meeting and the results were now released, being implemented starting from the next edition onwards.

We'd like to remind you: 

According to the NBU rulesbook, a foreign act can't be chosen directly through an internal selection, and it can't compete in a National Selection unless there are other nine acts who are native from the country.

And from now on, those will be the conditions:

For foreign acts of a NVSC participant country: 

The HoD of the borrower country must ask the other one about the use of an artist from that country in his/her National Selection, quite early. They have both to agree on that, and to tell the NBU council before the announcement.

The HoD of the country whose the artist is borrowed from, has absolutely all the rights over that act, so he can of course say no and decline the request without any risks. *

For foreign acts of a NON-NVSC participant country:

The HoD of the borrower country must ask the NBU council about using a foreign act who doesn't come from Europe/NBU broadcasting zone. The council will vote being based on criterias, such as originality, fame and views. A song has to get 3 of 5 votes to be approved, and all this to guarantee originality and fairness in the competition.


*Even if the submissions have already started for the eight edition, this remains valid for every borrowed/borrower broadcaster.

Violators will be punished according to the NBU rulesbook, with a strike.

[Dimitris]

3 minute-versions for the songs!

Early today, the head of the NBU council announced that the songs of the contest from the eighth edition and on will have a 3 minute-version, unless it's exactly 3 minutes, made by NBU or the host broadcaster. The version will be available only on the official North Vision channel, where the official preview videos are uploaded since the seventh edition.

The submission period of the eighth edition has started and will close just before the Pre-Qualifying Round where the bottom five of each North Vision 7 semi-final will compete in order to advance to the semi-finals of the North Vision Song Contest 8.

[Rick]

Important news for the upcoming editions!

Stockholm, Sweden - The NBU has reviewed some of the rules that were going on until today, including the borrowing borders of some countries. During this meeting, where a delegate of the  Kringvarp Føroya (SVF) was present, the application of the Faroe Islands to be a part of the North Broadcasting Union was accepted. "We're really happy to be part of the NBU as, beside the Northivision Song Contest, offers the Faroese national broadcaster a lot of new possibilities... this has only to be an advantage for us!" - said the SVF delegate. If all the bureaucratic steps go well, the little islands will be able to join the Northvision Song Contest from the ninth edition onwards.

The umpteenth application to the NBU by the Greenlandic Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR) was also earlier sent to the council but it's still pending approval. If it is accepted, Greenland can join the Northvision community starting from the ninth edition onwards as well.

As said before in this article, some of the borrowing rules were reviewed. It was also decided that generally, all the borrowed songs must have not entered the top 100 charts in any country.

The table was edited this way:

Borrower	Borrowing From
Faroe Islands	Denmark
Liechtenstein	Austria; Switzerland
Andorra	Spain
Luxembourg	Belgium
Monaco	France
San Marino	Italy

The following countries can borrow from eachother only once in five editions:

Montenegro; Bosnia & Herzegovina	Serbia
Moldova	Romania
Greece	Cyprus

This means, Estonia is no longer allowed to borrow from Finland, Kazakhstan is no longer allowed to borrow from Russia, and the same goes for Czech Republic and Slovakia.

- NBU -