TVE envía su versión a la UER tras la queja de OGAE España

COMMENT FROM TVE/RTVE

on a claim to the Spanish National Selection

from Mr. José-Juan Santana

Dear Mr. Stockselius,

In response to Mr. José Juan Santana Rodríguez’s letter to you, and once our national selection process is in its last stage (we already have the ten candidates which will be competing on March 8^th to be selected as the Spanish candidate in the upcoming 2008 ESC) we would like to formally respond to the following:

1) As Mr. Santanana states, RTVE decided this year to opt for an innovative selection procedure. Through a partnership with MySpace, the world’s largest social network, we chose to conduct the selection entirely on the Internet, devising a process which we believe was much more transparent and democratic than any other that we have had in the past.

2) The response from the local musicians was positive and overwhelming. We received more than 600 entries (one sixth of which were disregarded for not meeting the ESC’s criteria) from all music styles, as opposed to 200 that we received last year.

3) The process reached out to the mainstream media and to the younger audience, achieving one of our original goals, to reenergize the contest and to increase public awareness.

4) MySpace and RTVE closely monitored the procedure at all of its stages to ensure fairness. We also opened up direct communication channels with the contestants and later with the voters (through the daily updated questions and answers forums on the MySpace-RTVE Eurovision webpage and through specific email accounts), so that no question or problem experienced by the artists or the fans would go unaddressed.

5) As with every ground-breaking endeavour, we had to face some unforeseen obstacles. The unexpected massive turn out of voters broke down the servers during the first day of voting. We tackled the mishap immediately, safely delaying the voting for two days and adding more servers to make the system robust enough to handle the large web traffic figures. This had no impact on the outcome of the procedure or the contestants whatsoever, since at all times we publicly kept the people informed on the state of the affairs, and since we zeroed back all of the counters (extending the voting period two more days to make up for the initial delay), so that all contestants would compete in equal conditions.

6) The voting logs were scrutinized daily by MySpace and RTVE and any glitches such as the ones described by Mr. Santana (irregular and automatic voting from some servers) were addressed in an efficient and immediate manner, adjusting the number of votes accordingly and making all changes public to ensure transparency.

7) As with some voters discovering that they could not vote from email accounts such as “Hotmail”, the problem was also immediately tackled —the confirmation emails were recognised by some of those web services as “spam” and redirected to the “spam box”. After talking to all the affected companies (MSN and the like), all the emails pending confirmation were forwarded back to the voters, ensuring that no valid vote was lost in the process.

8) The panel of experts who chose five of the ten final candidates was formed by 5 people with a solid music background, as can easily be attested (four of them are involved in RTVE’s music programmes and initiatives, and the fifth is MySpace’s top manager in Spain, himself a former musician with strong connections with the music industry). The difference between this year and any previous one —the selection by an internal committee seemingly favoured by Mr. Santana— is that in this case their names were made public and that they can be held accountable for their decisions. In our opinion, this was another major step forward in the path towards achieving a fairer and more democratic selection, and not the other way around, as Mr. Santana implies in his letter.

For all these reasons, we want to assure you and the UER than we feel deeply confident on how the first part of the selection process (our joint online effort with MySpace) turned out, despite the technical glitches we immediately confronted and that are inherent to an innovative procedure of such nature, and that we consider it already to be a success in terms of participation and public awareness.

Dear Mr Stockselius,

I am writing to you, in your role as Head of the Eurovision Song Contest, to inform you of the current situation of the Spanish national selection process for the festival this year:

TVE decided to begin the selection process on the webpage of MySpace.com, which as you may know is a webpage dedicated to personal profiles. It is common for many artists to use MySpace.com as a forum to publicise their work, by uploading their songs and videos.

For the Spanish selection process, a special page on MySpace.com has been created, www.myspace.com/eurovision2008. Artists who wish to enter must first create a personal profile and then upload their song and video.

Finally, the public (online voters) vote for their favourite profile/artist. The top 5 chosen by the online voters, plus another 5 entries, chosen by a so-called panel of experts, perform on national television, TVE, in a gala final on March 1st.

The rules of the process announced by TVE are the following:

1) Voting is open to everyone through Internet.

2) Each person may vote a maximum of 5 times daily, for whom he/she wishes.

3) The votes must be confirmed through email to avoid automatic voting.

4) The evolution of the voting process is visible at all times via MySpace.com.

5) The five most voted artists on Saturday 23rd of February at 23.59 will automatically qualify for the final on March 1st.

6) Another five artists will be chosen by a panel of experts.

7) On Monday, February 25th, the five artists chosen by the panel of experts will be announced.

8) MySpace.com y TVE may disqualify at any moment any artist that does not comply with the rules laid down by the UER.

The voting process was due to commence on Thursday February 14th at 10am and close on Saturday the 23rd at 23.59.

This selection procedure, which at first promised to be innovative and accessible to anyone who wanted to enter the contest, has turned out to be anything but that. There have been continuous technical problems with quick-fix solutions that have affected many artists, and have provoked distrust, with many doubting the fairness of the process.

In total, 530 entries have been received, which has surpassed all expectations.

Some private Spanish television channels, direct competition to TVE, have even entered as a way of poking fun at the Spanish selection process.

The day on which the voting was due to start, the page was inundated with visits and the voting process had to be postponed until the following Saturday.

The security system announced by MySpace.com to prevent mass voting has not been effective, given that anyone is free to create as many free email accounts as they wish and thereby voting as many times as they wish, even from the same IP address, which is contrary to what was publicised.

Furthermore, and without prior warning, the online voters discovered two days later that votes emitted from the email accounts of “Hotmail”, “terra” and “telefonica” are not valid and do not count in the voting system.

In the forums of MySpace.com and of the highly regarded Spanish webpage www.eurovision-spain.com, there are hundreds of complaints from online users regarding the transparency of the system and the fact that it is easy to manipulate.

The webpage eurovision-spain.com receives emails daily from both artists who have entered the process and voters, who are disappointed and feel cheated by the system.

The system is far from being transparent: the votes are not counted instantaneously, but updated hourly. Many online users assure that they have tested the system to verify that the total sum of votes does not coincide with the votes made for certain entries.

Apparently, there is neither a notary nor a supervisor from TVE to assure the fairness of the selection process.

Technically, the system is botched. On the webpage eurovision-spain.com a parallel voting system has been established, whose security system is much simpler, quicker and more effective than that of MySpace.com and TVE.

Many hopefuls have been left out of the selection process, even though they had registered with plenty of time before the closing date. If necessary, names can be provided of those artists who contacted MySpace.com and were unable to get in touch with someone who would take responsibility for what was happening.

On the so-called “panel of experts” there is no one who could be called an expert neither of Eurovision nor of music. They are simply, 5 people who are related to either MySpace or TVE, without further criteria.

The continuous irregularities of this method of selecting candidates have been continually echoed by the Spanish media and press.

We, the official club of OGAE-Spain, feel obliged to inform you of this matter, and we suggest that the UER take measures before this process, full of irregularities, concludes. As an urgent measure, if need be, we suggest that TVE make an internal decision and designate a candidate to represent Spain for the festival of 2008. Thereby cancelling this strange method of selecting a candidate, that appears more to correspond to business interests and agreements rather than the fair and democratic selection of the candidate to represent Spain in Eurovision 2008.

We consider that these incidents are even more serious occurring inside a member country of the Big Four, such as is Spain and TVE, considering that they should be setting an example to follow for the rest of the participating countries.

José Juan Santana Rodríguez (Presidente OGAE España)