Abstract
During the Cold War, the International Organisation for Radio and Television, which comprised national broadcasting organisations from Eastern European states, staged the Intervision Song Contest (ISC) as an alternative to Western Europe’s Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). The cliched interpretation would be that the ISC was less commercially oriented and internationally open than the ESC; however, this chapter argues that Intervision actually introduced innovations to the format of the televised international song contest. This chapter thus considers the role that the ISC played in a commercial, pan-European network that connected popular music industries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and how Intervision contributed to the forming of a common European popular culture by showcasing stars who were popular in both Eastern and Western Europe.
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