Origins and History
The origins of the contest date back to 2000 when Danmarks Radio held a song contest for Danish children that year and the following year. The idea was extended to a Scandinavian song festival in 2002, MGP Nordic, with Denmark, Norway and Sweden as participants. The EBU picked up the idea for a song contest featuring children and opened the competition to all EBU member broadcasters making it a pan-European event. The working title of the programme was "Eurovision Song Contest for Children", branded with the name of the EBU's already popular song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest. Denmark was asked to host the first programme after their experience with their own contests and the MGP Nordic.
After a successful first contest, the second faced several location problems. The event originally should have been organised by British broadcaster ITV in Manchester. ITV then announced that due to financial and scheduling reasons, the contest would not take place in the United Kingdom after all. It is also thought that another factor to their decision was the previous years' audience ratings for ITV which were below the expected amount. The EBU approached Croatian broadcaster HRT, who had won the previous contest, to stage the event in Zagreb; though it later emerged that HRT had 'forgotten' to book the venue in which the contest would have taken place. It was at this point, with five months remaining until the event would be held, that Norwegian broadcaster NRK stepped in to host the contest in Lillehammer.
Broadcasters have had to bid for the rights to host contest since 2004 to avoid such problems from happening again. Belgium was therefore the first country to successfully bid for the rights to host the contest in 2005.
All contests have been broadcast in 16:9 widescreen and in high definition. All have also had a CD produced with the songs from the show. Between 2003 and 2006, DVDs of the contest were also produced though this ended due to lack of interest.
The winner of the contest is decided by a televote. Between 2003 and 2005 viewers had around 10 minutes to vote after all the songs had been performed. Since 2006 the televoting lines have been open throughout the programme. Profits made from the televoting during the 2007 and 2008 contests were donated to UNICEF.
Prior to 2007, a participating broadcaster's failure in not broadcasting the contest live would incur a fine. Now broadcasters are no longer required to broadcast the contest live, but may transmit it with some delay at a time that is more appropriate for children's television broadcast.
The 2007 contest was the subject of the 2008 documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary. The film followed several contestants as they made their way through the national finals and onto the show itself. It was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival 2008 and was premiered in Ghent, Belgium and Limassol, Cyprus where the 2008 contest was held.
Read more about this topic: Junior Eurovision Song Contest
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