EurovisionAgain
EurovisionAgain, usually stylized as #EurovisionAgain, was an initiative that ran from 21 March 2020 to 20 November 2021 to re-broadcast previous finals of the Eurovision Song Contest on YouTube during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Conceived by journalist Rob Holley, it eventually became a collaborative effort between Eurovision fans, the European Broadcasting Union and its member broadcasters.
History
Upon hearing about the cancellation of the Eurovision [Song Contest 2020] due to the COVID-19 pandemic, journalist Rob Holley launched an initiative to watch a past contest on YouTube every week as a replacement, eventually giving it the title EurovisionAgain. The initiative quickly became popular, so the EBU itself decided to partake. Every Saturday at 21:00 CEST, the Eurovision YouTube channel would re-broadcast a final of a previous contest, revealed by the EurovisionAgain team 15 minutes before the start. Contests prior to 2004 were available for a limited time.The initiative was generally received as a welcome distraction for Eurovision fans during the COVID-19 lockdowns. On Twitter, #EurovisionAgain regularly became a trending topic and received positive reactions from past participants. As part of the initiative, Holley collected over £24,700 for UK-based LGBTQ+ charities. The 2020 season ended with a special edition, 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 in the [Eurovision Song Contest 2016|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 a replay of the, the oldest edition to be featured as part of the initiative, and concluded on 20 November with a replay of the. Unlike the contents shown in 2020, the pre-2004 broadcasts were made available for a full month rather than one week. This season also included a special broadcast of the high-definition test tapes from the.
In August 2021, the EBU stated that it was planning to broadcast "as many finals as we can over the next few years" through the initiative. Despite this, there were no further updates on whether the initiative would return after 2021, and in August 2022, the EurovisionAgain Twitter account changed its biography line to "#EurovisionAgain - ran sync viewings of classic Eurovision Song Contests during the 2020/21 lockdowns", implying that the initiative had been concluded.