The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union is currently monitoring whether the ABU Song Contest can take place in 2021.
The Director of Programming at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union has confirmed to Eurovoix World that the organisation is currently monitoring whether the ABU Song Contest can be held this year.
The ABU Song Contest was first due to be held in October 2019 in Qingdao, China before being reorganised for 2020, but that was subsequently cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr Naghata said in a statement that:
We were not able to deliver this event due to the COVID situation in the region and in our host country i.e. China.
We are currently monitoring the situation of COVID-19 in our region to see whether we can run this event in 2021.
How will the ABU Song Contest work?
Each broadcaster will select their participant for the competition, the singer must be 16 years old or over. All singers must perform live at the contest and can perform a song in any genre. Songs may be original or popular songs, but cannot be about sensitive issues. Songs may not exceed 3 minutes in length.
All participants apart from those from the host nation must compete in the semi-final. Qualifiers will be selected from the semi-final to compete in the Grand Final.
The qualifiers and the winner will be decided by the votes of audience juries and an International Professional Jury. The International Professional Jury will be located in the venue, while the Audience Juries are formed by each participating broadcaster. Each audience jury is formed of 100 people.
Image Source: Haier.com | Source: ABU