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As Juhan Paadam, 55, sits in his office just weeks before the
Eurovision Song Contest, he apologizes to his interviewer as his mobile phone rings again and again. He fields half-a-dozen queries about the organization of the
Song Contest, by far the biggest such production ever staged in Estonia. Even the minister of culture calls.
Paadam (above photo with Song
Contest presenter Annely Peebo) has been at the heart of Estonia’s short but wildly successful
Eurovision history. He is the unofficial father of Estonia’s
Eurovision bids. As the day of the Song Contest approached, with the pressure inevitably building, he seemed to be calm in a storm of organizational activity around him.
 CITY PAPER: How was winning the Eurovision Song Contest important for Estonian Television, which won the right to host this year’s event?
It was very important. Estonian Television is the tiniest television company in Europe, and our budget is the lowest of any company in Europe. So winning, to us, showed we’re on the same professional level as bigger European companies.
CITY PAPER: Some might assume that if Estonian Television has the lowest budget, then winning
Eurovision might have been seen as a curse?
Organizing this contest is a challenge for any country, especially a small one. This is true. The total cost of the contest is some 122 million Estonian kroons, or some 7 million dollars. Half of that is paid by the
European Broadcasting Union (which oversees Eurovision). But the EBU does require a substantial financial commitment from us—some 50 million Estonian kroons, or some 3 million dollars. The amount it costs to put on the Song Contest is roughly equivalent to
Estonian Television’s entire annual budget. It’s obviously impossible for us to have paid that out of our budget. So, the 50 million kroons we must pay comes from ticket sales, from sponsorships and, in our case, from state support. The government agreed to cover the gap that we couldn’t fill with ticket sales and sponsorships—so about 35 million kroons.
CITY PAPER: Will there be benefits to Estonian Television in the long run?
Yes. This is the biggest project in the history of Estonian
Television—ever. So, for our people, it’s a tremendous educational experience, wonderful training.
CITY PAPER: There were those, as you know, who right away doubted that an ex-communist country like Estonia could manage to host Eurovision.
Yes. Some said there were no hotels, and no food in Estonia. Imagine that.
CITY PAPER: Do Estonians feel then that they have something to prove?
No. We won the contest as Europeans. We are a part of Europe. Over the past ten years, Estonia’s progress in every way has been a miracle, a fairy tale success story. So we have proved ourselves already. Okay, we have problems in Estonia. But every society has problems. We have nothing left to prove.
CITY PAPER: How personally will you be judging whether this Song Contest will have been a success?
We have to remember we are producing this contest not for people inside Estonia but for the outside world. So, every positive or negative comment, starting with neighboring Latvia and beyond, will mean a lot to us.
CITY PAPER: When you wake up the day after the Song Contest, how do you hope to feel?
How do I want to feel the morning after? I want to be alive.
CITY PAPER: Have there been any unique problems that Estonia has had to face that, say, Sweden or Ireland, did not have in staging
Eurovision?
One is that it’s not difficult to fly to Tallinn—but it’s more difficult for everyone to leave on the same day.
Tallinn Airport is not a transit airport, that is. So, we have had to work hard with travel agencies on this. But it is a problem we have solved.
CITY PAPER: What about the venue, Saku Suurhall. Could it have been larger?
No. The guidelines say the hall should not be smaller than 2,000 people.
Saku Suurhall can hold 10,000 people. At the contest in Israel in 1999, they had far fewer people—less than 2,000. But really, you could virtually have the whole
Song Contest in a studio if you wanted to. It’s just a TV show, after all. The live concert is really just a bonus. And it helps give some atmosphere to the show, of course.
CITY PAPER: You get a sense Estonians take Eurovision more seriously than people elsewhere. Is this the case?
Estonians take everything seriously. But it seems to me we don’t take
Eurovision overly seriously. We understand it’s light entertainment. Yes, there’s that sense of competition, people’s nerves get frayed, blood pressures rise. But, as we produce this, we always keep in mind that what we are producing here is light entertainment. This is not a documentary.
For more about the preparations, see The
Contest. Also pick up a copy of CITY PAPER's Eurovision edition.
—CITY PAPER-The Baltic States
Photographs courtesy of Estonian
Television
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