At the annual Contacts Meeting, held in Cascais, Portugal, almost 100 contacts from 41 European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Member organizations voiced strong support for Greek National broadcaster ERT following the Greek government's shock announcement of ERT's forced closure.

Challenges faced by Members’ Eurovision News (EVN) desks and foreign news gathering in the face of the financial crisis featured strongly on the agenda, but as the Chairman of the Editorial Subcommittee, Gudrun Gutt, said, "The situation faced by our ERT colleagues is something we can hardly believe is happening in a democratic Europe."

All conference participants expressed a strong concern for ERT but also a strong hope that the Greek government will reverse its decision.

The EBU network of Eurovision News Exchange, Sports News and Special Events contacts are examining new and alternative ways of how to work efficiently in spite of staff and financial cuts.

Sven Van Bijsterveldt of the Netherlands' NOS explained how they have reorganized their work after a dedicated EVN coordinator position was removed. In the NOS model all the staff working on the foreign desk needs to be capable of finding material coming from various sources and be able to offer stories to the Eurovision Exchange.

Participants at the annual Contacts Meeting, held in Cascais, Portugal (EBU)

A number of broadcasters presented various models of how they cooperate with the Eurovision News Exchange in Geneva today.  Roy Colgan, from Ireland's broadcaster RTE, explained that feeding material to Eurovision is deemed a priority and is one of each individual reporters other tasks. This increases awareness of the importance of the exchanges into the field.

The conclusion of the discussion was that there is no single perfect model, what is important is to put an efficient system in place and have the contribution to the exchange high on the list of  priorities.

Jeff Dubin, Head of News and Events at EBU, informed the participants that a major revision of the rules governing the exchange is underway by a working group led by Ed Mulhall, former Managing Director of RTE News and Current Affairs. The group is composed of EBU Members and Geneva News Exchange management.

This will be the first revision of the rules since 2004 and is intended to maintain the philosophy of the existing rules while addressing the new realities brought about by technology and the shift from a time/location broadcast based world to a multi-platform world without broadcast limitations. Hopefully the revised rules will be a sound and modern foundation for making contributions to the exchanges even a stronger priority.