Sit down for this news! Or don’t, because we all totally knew it was coming.
UKTV, the most recent broadcaster of the Eurovision Song Contest in New Zealand, has confirmed to us in a statement that they “don’t have any plans” to broadcast the Contest in May 2022.
The channel’s decision is consistent with its move in 2017 to stop broadcasting the Contest after slowly cutting back on the scale of its broadcasts, in favour of airing “premium” drama content. In 2014 and 2015, UKTV aired both semi-finals and the Grand Final with evening encores. The channel elected to curb its coverage in 2016 to just the Grand Final and an encore screening before finally dropping the Contest entirely before the 2017 edition.
In addition, TVNZ—an Associate Member of the European Broadcasting Union—doesn’t seem too interested in broadcasting the Contest either, telling us in a statement that it is “still too far away to know” if they will carry any of the live shows.
Last year, the EBU confirmed that it (obviously) had “no plans right now” to invite New Zealand to compete at Eurovision but they did share some helpful advice for how to make such an invitation happen. Sadly, it seems that we might spend another year ignoring that advice.
Though, despair should not set in the hearts of Kiwi Eurofans – a live stream via the official YouTube channel, without commentary, will be available for all live shows in Turin, Italy. We’ll see you in May at 7AM!
UKTV is a subscription channel operated by BBC Studios ANZ.
