User:Lilduff90/EurovisionAgain

EurovisionAgain, usually stylized as #EurovisionAgain, is an ongoing initiative to rebroadcast all previous finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, as most of the finals before 2004 are unavailable online and in many cases only exist in poor quality off-screen recordings. Originally concieved by fans, it has since become a collaborative effort between fans, the European Broadcasting Union and its various broadcasters. The finals are broadcast on the official Eurovision YouTube channel at 21:00 CEST on the third Saturday of every month during the Eurovision off-season, and remain accessible for one month due to copyright agreements. In August 2021, the EBU confirmed that they are planning to broadcast "as many finals as we can over the next few years" through the #EurovisionAgain program.

History
Upon hearing about the cancellation of Eurovision Song Contest 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic, journalist Rob Holley launched an initiative to watch a past contest on YouTube every week as a replacement. #EurovisionAgain quickly became popular, so the EBU itself decided to join the initiative. Every Saturday at 21:00 CEST, the Eurovision YouTube channel re-broadcasts a final of a previous contest, revealed by the #EurovisionAgain team 15 minutes before the start. Contests prior to 2004 are available for a limited time. The initiative was generally received as a welcome distraction for fans. On Twitter, #EurovisionAgain regularly became a trending topic and received positive reactions of past participants. As part of the initiative, Holley has collected over £24,700 for charity. The 2020 season ended with a special edition of #EurovisionAgain where the 26 most popular songs that did not qualify for the final, one from each country, as chosen via the official Eurovision social media handles, were streamed and put to a fan-vote. Iceland's 2016 entry, Hear Them Calling by Greta Salóme, won the fan-vote.

On 19 June 2021, the second year of broadcasts commenced with the replay of the 1969 contest from Madrid, the oldest contest to be featured to date. Unlike the contents shown in 2020, the broadcast is now made available for a full month rather than one week. This season also included a special broadcast of the recently-discovered high-definition test tapes from the 2006 contest.

Availability
The initiative has been well recieved by fans as it has made it possible for viewers to experience older Eurovision finals, and also allowed fans access to higher quality copies for older finals than previously available. Due to copyright agreements, the EBU only have ownership of contests aired since 2004, with individual broadcasters owning the rights to those before that. A large majority of the sixty-five finals, especially those in the former half of the Eurovision history, have previously only been available as recordings made by fans on video tape, often with generational loss, especially those from the 1950s and 60s. In August 2021, the EBU confirmed that they are planning to broadcast their entire archive of finals "over the next few years" through the #EurovisionAgain program.

Format
Each replayed final is broadcast as a premiere on the official Eurovision Youtube Channel, with fans encouraged to vote on their favorites during the interval. Once the broadcast ends, the final remains on Youtube for one month, and the fan vote results are posted on Twitter. The selection of each broadcast is a surprise, with the year kept secret until 15 minutes before the start of the broadcast, with the exception of various hints and clues being posted on the EurovisionAgain Twitter account in the days and hours prior. For most of the finals, a previous winner, participant, presenter or producer of the actual year has prerecorded an introduction that is released at 20:45, along with the reveal of which year is being broadcast.

For the 2021 season, the broadcasts have also included modern reimaginings of the scoreboards using 3D animation in the graphical style of the original scoreboards.

Rebroadcast contests
As of August 2021, twenty-three of the previous contests have been broadcast as part of the #EurovisionAgain, with two additional special broadcasts.