OTI Festival

Background

Participation

Hosting The location of the festival was decided following two criteria throughout its history. Initially, the winning broadcaster would organize and stage the contest the following year. Because many participating broadcasters were suffering from political and economic instability in their countries, the OTI decided, just before the 1977 edition, to drop that rule and open a selection process to choose the host broadcaster starting with the 1978 edition, to which all its members were eligible to apply. The 1977 festival was won by Nicaragua, which was not able to host the 1978 festival due to the Nicaraguan Revolution, becoming the first to not be able to do so. The 1999 edition, which was going to be held in Veracruz, had to be suspended due to the severe flooding that occurred in early October in the country, which devastated the city. Spain and Mexico were the countries that hosted the contest the most, with six editions each one. In total, the festival was hosted in thirteen countries, out of the twenty-seven that ever participated. Editions Year Date of Final City Venue Presenter Host broadcaster Orchestra 1972 25 November |1945hlist|Rosa María Mateo|ill|Íris Lettieri|pt Voting system The voting system to decide the outcome of the festival changed over the years. Initially, voting was public, with a five-member jury assembled by each participating broadcaster in their country casting their votes by telephone, and the counting being displayed on a scoreboard. Each jury member voted only for one song, which could not be the one representing their country, with the song with the most votes winning, and the second- and third-placed songs usually also being awarded. In 1977 the number of jurors per country was changed to three due to an increase of participating entries. In 1978, the voting was changed so that each country cast 1–5 points to its five favorite songs in order of preference. And in 1982, remote juries were abolished and each participating broadcaster appointed a single juror who was present in the hall instead. Starting in 1983, voting became secret, with only the top three entries revealed at the end. That year, each participating broadcaster appointed a juror who was present in the hall and who scored all entries, except its own, between 1 and 5 points in a secret voting. From 1984 on, the outcome was decided by a professional jury assembled by the organizers composed by well-known music personalities, which was present in the hall and voted secretly. Winners Mexico and Spain were the most successful countries in the history of the competition with six victories each while Argentina won the contest four times. Brazil was the fourth most successful country with three victories. Spanish singer is the only artist to have won the competition twice. Spanish songwriters Alejandro Abad and won the competition twice, as did Mexican songwriters Francisco Curiel and Pedro Cárdenas. Year Country Song Singer Songwriter 1972 Brazil|1968lang\|pt|Diálogo|i=nohlist|Paulo César Pinheiro|Baden Powell By country Wins Country Years 6 Spain Legacy Although the OTI Festival has not been held since 2000, it is still widely remembered in many countries, especially in Mexico, where the festival was always well received by the audience, even when its popularity was declining. It was enormously popular there thanks to the "National OTI Festival", which was the multi-stage national competition organized by Televisa to select its entry for the international contest. Many famous singers such as Juan Gabriel, Luis Miguel, Emmanuel, Lucero, or the girl band Pandora, tried to represent Mexico in the OTI Festival, but they didn't win the national contest. Both Televisión Española in Spain and Radiotelevisão Portuguesa in Portugal were members of the OTI and the European Broadcasting Union, so they were eligible to participate in both the OTI Festival and the Eurovision Song Contest representing their countries. The band Trigo Limpio represented Spain in the OTI Festival 1977 and in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980. Marcos Llunas won for Spain the OTI Festival 1995 and represented the country in the Eurovision Song Contest 1997, making him the only OTI winner to ever participate in Eurovision. Betty Missiego, who represented Peru in the OTI Festival 1972, represented Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979. Numerous artists participated in both competitions representing Portugal, such as Anabela, Paulo de Carvalho, José Cid, Dora, Dulce Pontes, Adelaide Ferreira, Simone de Oliveira, and Tonicha. Other well known OTI contestants from these countries were Spanish Marisol, Dyango, Vicky Larraz, and Camilo Sesto; and Portuguese Lena d'Água. Only one Eurovision winner has previously participated in the OTI Festival: Dave Benton, who represented the Netherlands Antilles in 1981 as Efrem Benita, won the Eurovision Song Contest 2001 for, with the song "Everybody" along Tanel Padar and 2XL. Return attempts As the mark of the OTI Festival in Latin America is still big, some organisations of diverse nature have tried to revive the festival. Some Mexican artists also made public their support to a return of the OTI Festival. In March 2011, it was announced by some online newspapers that Televisa was preparing for the relaunch of the event in two stages, the first one, was to revive the "National OTI Contest", the Mexican national final, while the second one would be to revive the international and main OTI Festival. The aim of this attempt to bring to life the festival was to give the opportunity to young performers to show their talent. The festival at the end never took place, but it was neither cancelled. In June 2016, it was announced the relaunch of OTI as a media organisation. The broadcasting union was renamed as "Organización de Telecomunicaciones de Iberoamerica" evolving from a television content exchange platform to include members of a broader nature such as newspapers and telephone-internet companies apart from television and radio channels. This relaunch instantaneously sparked rumors about a possible relaunch of the festival that were later denied. In 2017 it was announced the start of an organisation called "Organización de Talento Independiente" which in Spanish casually coincides with the acronym "OTI". The main goal of the organisation was to try to recreate the festival between Mexican singers and artists from the Latin community of the United States. Although the festival was not a competition between broadcasters of participating countries, the competition was held in the Mexican city of Puerto Peñasco. In February 2022, Radiotelevisión Española announced Hispavision, a song festival where Spanish-speaking Latin American countries will take part alongside Brazil and Portugal as invited nations. The project was scheduled to start in 2023 and would be held in Cartagena, Colombia. In 12 July 2022, the EBU announced its expansion of the Eurovision Song Contest brand to Latin America. The planned contest would be produced by the same producers of other Eurovision spin-offs, including the American Song Contest. There was no further information on these projects after their announcement.