Russia’s Intervision Song Contest

Day 188 / 365

We all remember the reality contests back in the day, TV shows that gave people the chance to become India’s next biggest singer, dancer, or actor. The concept isn’t a new one. Eurovision, one of the biggest international song contest has been around since 1956. During the cold war, the Soviet Union decided to create its own contest to rival Eurovision, and they named in Intervision.

But there was a problem. While most such reality shows have judges, the most common way of deciding the winner is through an audience vote. People watching at home could call a certain number to vote for their favorite. But in those days not a lot of people living in the Soviet nations had personal phones. So the producers of Intervision had to innovate.

They came up with quite a brilliant scheme to allow people to vote without phones. They asked their viewers to turn the lights at their homes on when they liked a song, and keep them off for the songs which they didn’t like. This would create spikes of energy usage for the best contestants. The state energy department sent the reports of these spikes to the television company who then used them to give points to the contestants!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Where’s the million dollar homepage man now?