Pacivision Song Contest 2023 (Pacifica)

Pacivision Song Contest 2023
Waves of Harmony
Dates
Final	20 October 2023
Host
Venue	Pacifican Breeze Arena Calicea, Stoinia
Executive supervisor	Paro Ytti
Host broadcaster	Terra Pacifica
Participants
Number of entries	26
Debuting countries	Conaro Eflad Fatiniyya Fauderland FiHami Holy Free Keanu and Hurley Kliegme Luzhnychka Myria Phanama Qaweritoyu Sallodesia Termina UPRAN Valkyria Weisserstein
Returning countries	None
Non-returning countries	Arnchow Beepee Besern
Vote
Voting system	Each country and one "Rest of the World" jury awards one set of 12, 10, 8-1 points to the other 10 songs through televoting. Juries in each country also rank the other songs in the categories "Best Lyrics", "Best Performance" and "Most Original". Based on the overall score, each country receives an additional 1-8, 10 or 12 points in each category.

The Pacivision Song Contest 2023 was planned to be the 3rd edition of the Pacivision Song Contest. Following the Gianlucian victory in the 2022 contest in Gralois, Ikoania, their broadcaster BUS TV would have taken precedence in hosting the 2023 edition of the event. However, the broadcaster declined hosting the event. Therefore the Pacivision Executive Board (PEB) once again opened a bidding for contest hosting rights, which was won by the bid for Calicea, Stoinia. Organised by the PEB and the host broadcaster Terra Pacifica, the contest was supposed to be held at the Pacifican Breeze Arena in late Summer 2023. Due to financial problems by the designated broadcaster, the contest was cancelled on 1 September 2023.

Unitl the official cancellation, a record number of 26 countries had applied for the contest, out of which 17 would have given their debut, including the host country Stoinia,

Location

Bidding phase

On 7 March 2023, PEB launched the bidding process and published a list of criteria and requirements for the host city and venue. Interested broadcasters were to submit bids on behalf of the city electronically, after which PEB would proceed to send all of them a bid book with more detailed requirements for the cities and broadcaster to submit their plans for review. The cities had until 24 March 2023 to draft and submit their detailed plans.

On 10 March 2023, on behalf of the city of Calicea, Stoinia officially announced its bid, proposing the Pacifican Breeze Arena as a possible venue to host the event. Since PEB's minimum hosting requirements were met by the application of Terra Pacifica and no other broadcaster submitted a big book to the PEB, Calicea was officially announced as the host city of the 2023 contest on 25 March 2023.

Other sites

The "Pacivision Village", which was introduced during the Pacivision Song Contest in Gralois, was not planned to return. Instead it was planned to have the event fully confined to the Pacifican Breeze Arena and as such scale it back to a level comparable of that of the first edition of the contest.

Production

The Pacivision Song Contest 2023 was supposed to be produced by the Stoinian public broadcaster Terra Pacifica. Due to not receiving the necessary funding by the Stoinian government, the event never got out of its planning stages. The PEB and Terra Pacifica have not commented how much money was missing, but experts assume that at least TSP-$ 15 million would have been needed to host the contest and broadcast the show to all participating countries.

Visual and stage design

While Terra Pacifica has not revealed any staging plans, the PEB has revealed several graphics that were planned to be used to announce the upcoming songs. The stage ready graphics showed a tidal wave in the main colours of the participating country's flag with its name on top of the wave. Below, information about the upcoming song was depicted in several boxes of different shades of blue. This was all encompassed by water bubbles within a dark blue environment creating the illusion, that the viewer would dive deep to reach the song.

Example of a ''stage ready graphic'' for the PSC 2023

Format

Running-Order

The running-order was determined by producers of Terra Pacifica on 12 August 2023 and sent to the PEB on the same day. The producers decided against a random draw to have more freedom in "creating a show telling a story".

The planned running-order looked as follows:

Draw	Country	Artist	Song	Language(s)
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11

Postcards

The "postcards" are short introduction videos shown on television whilst the stage is being prepared for the next contestant to perform their entry, and are 40 seconds long. There was no information revealed, how the postcards were planned to look like.

Participating countries and incidents

The PEB initially announced on 25 March 2023 that 10 countries would participate in the 2023 contest. 16 more countries eventually announced their participation until the final deadline on 8 August 2023, of which 17 would have given their debut. Next to the host Stoinia that would have also included Luzhnychka, who were disqualified for applying with a political song and refusing to change the lyrics however.

Due to the sudden cancellation of the event, BUS TV and the PEB have announced, they are reconsidering whether another hosting bidding phase will be started for the 2024 edition of the song contest.or whether the event will return to Gianatla's Southern Gate Festival by default. Paro Ytti already explained, the financial stability of the hosting broadcaster as well as the political willingness to host the competition would play a bigger role in the PEB's decision, whenever the hosting rights would be given to a non-Gianlucian broadcaster in the future.

Broadcasts

Broadcasters and commentators

Following broadcasters had announced their intent to broadcast the contest and have also provided information on the commentators for the show.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Notes
Gianatla	BUS TV	Günther Lesch
Izaakia	IBC/Cosmos Network	Una Kissa, Garry Horton & Bobby O’Behave
Snolland	STV	Evva Zela

See also

• Official Website
• List of Pacivision Song Contest entries