Festival OTI
| OTI Song Contest | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Also known as | OTI |
| Genre | Song Contest |
| Created by | Marcel Bezençon |
| Based on | Eurovision Song Contest |
| Developed by | Iberoamerican Television Organisation |
| Country of origin | List of countries |
| Original language(s) | Spanish and Portuguese |
| No. of episodes | 28 Contests |
| Production | |
| Location(s) | Hosted by previous winner from 1972 to 1981 (List of host cities) |
| Running time |
|
| Production company(s) | Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana |
| Release | |
| Picture format | |
| Original release | 25 November 1972 – 2000 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Worldwide Latin Song Contest (1969-1970) |
| External links | |
| www.otitelecom.org | www |
OTI Festival (Spanish: Festival OTI de la Canción) was an annual singing competition, held between 1972 and 2000 among active member countries of the Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana (OTI) (Iberoamerican Television Organisation). It was preceded in 1969 and 1970 by the Festival Mundial de la Canción Latina, held in Mexico.
The festival was a Latin-American spin-off of the Eurovision song Contest. The first show was held in the Congress Palace of Madrid on November 25, 1972 and the last one was held on May 20, 2000 in Acapulco. Since then, the show was cancelled due to the questioning of the voting system of the last shows, the lack of sponsors, the low quality of the entrants and the withdrawal of some of the most iconic countries such as Brazil, Colombia and even Spain.
The main goal of the festival was to generate a process of cultural and artistic fellowship between the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. Although it was not as successful as the Eurovision Song Contest, the festival left a great mark in Latin America by giving many famous artists and hit songs.
The OTI festival is to date, the longest running and most successful Eurovision Song Contest spin off with 28 editions.
Although the OTI contest was inspired in the Eurovision Song Contest, the festival was preceded by the "Worldwide latin song contest" which was held in Mexico DF in the Teatro ferrocarrilero in 1969 and 1970. These are the winners:
The countries that were elegible to participate in the OTI festival needed to be active members of the Iberoamerican Television Organisation. The active members were those ones which belonged to the Organisation of Iberoamerican States.
In order to take part in the event, the participating countries were required to be Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries, to have large communities of Spanish or Portuguese speakers within their territory (for instance United States of America), or to have lingual or cultural ties with Latin American countries (As happened with the Dutch Antilles). Apart from that, the entrant song needed to be performed in Spanish or Portuguese languages.
Both state financed and private broadasters were able to join OTI as full members and in some cases different broadcasters collaborated during the airing of the event as did the Venezuelan broadcasters Venevision and RCTV.
...
Wikipedia