Ash cloud brings challenges for Eurovision organizers

The gigantic ash cloud that shut down air traffic in Northern- and Western Europe now also affects the preparations for the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest. Although the implications are small, it is one team in particular which is making long hours..!

Every day, camera crews of Host Broadcaster NRK are travelling through Europe to record the 39 postcard videos in all participating countries. Now that air traffic has been suspended in over ten European countries, the team's coordinator Ragnhild Skale had to come up with some creative schedule changes, not to lose time. While NRK is well on schedule with the preparations for the 2010 running of Europe's favourite TV-show, Mother Nature decided to interfere with the organisers' travel schedule.

Postcards are the short, 35-second video introduction videos prior to each performance. This year, the postcards will feature cheering fans in each nation's capital.

Despite grounded flights, video journalist Leif Hatland, who is one of the people travelling across Europe to record the introduction videos to the participants' performances, was lucky. "We got him the last bus ticket from Copenhagen to Stockholm. From there, we got him on a boat to Helsinki," Ragnhild Skåle told in an interview with NRK's website. "After Helsinki, it's becoming interesting, since we would have to go to London and Dublin," Hatland added.

The coordinator of NRK's postcards team says that cancellation of postcard recordings is unlikely so far, and that a good margin has been built in. Ironically, next week's first destination on the postcard team's schedule is... Iceland!


/Eurovision.tv/