Zone Song Contest

The **Zone Song Contest**, often abbreviated to **ZSC**, or **Song Zone** is a song contest on Youtube, Google Drive and Twitter held among the actual members of the EBU. This song contest is based upon the existing ESC, the official executive supervisor of the contest is **Z\*One**.

## History

### Main History

On 10th September of 2019, Z\*One executive supervisor of the Zone Song Contest decided to open a international music contest which people can enjoy listening to new music or their favorite artists living the contest and having the option to decide the winner as if it were Eurovision, with a dynamic consisting in the averages of all voters divided into two groups, juries and televotes, giving a grade from 0 to 100 according to their musical taste, and translated to the points from each participating country with the *ESC Calc*. What started out as a hobby turned into a passion for both Z\*One and the Zone Song Contest fans.

### Slogans

Since the first edition, slogans were used for the contest, in each edition the broadcaster was in charge to decide the slogan of the edition based on it, develope the contest's theme and visual design.

## Participation

Any full member of the ZBU is allowed to send a song for the Zone Song Contest. Countries that are not full members can apply for becoming a debutant. The Zone Song Contest team has already accepted some countries that were not full members of the ZBU at the beginnings of the ZSC. However, These countries can't make their debut until further notice.

Z\*One is the responsible for the choice of the artists and songs the country is sending for each edition. A total of **47** countries have participated at least in the first edition. These are listed here alongside the edition in which they made their debut:

## The 'Zone' Season

The 'Zone' season is a term often used to refer to the days "around" the contest. It usually lasts one month and the most national selections are held that time. Also, various events are hosted during the season like parties or press conferences, People are looking forward to these dates because the festival is only held three times each year.

### Rehearsals and press conferences

Each country has two rehearsals before the contest. The rehearsals start with the semi-final countries nine days before the first semi-final. During the first two days, the rehersals for the first semi-final countries take place while during the next two days the rehearsals for the second semi-final countries take place. The second rehearsals for each country take place on the fifth and sixth days. On the seventh day, the big 6 countries have their first rehearsal taken. On the ninth day, the big 6 have their second rehearsal taken. Apart from the regular rehearsals, there are also three dress rehearsals for each show where the full show is rehearsed. The dress rehearsals for the semi-finals and the final take place in two days: twice on the day before the show (one in the afternoon and the other in the evening) and once on the day of the show. The third dress rehearsal, the one before the contest, is the show that is taken place for the jury, which means that the 50% of the result is decided before the live contest. The table shows the schedule that is used for every edition with some adjustments made for each edition.

## Voting

The voting system it's in use from the first edition. Countries award two sets of points from 1 to 8, then 10 and finally 12 to their favourite songs in the competition — that will finally be combined having this balance: televote (50%) and jury (50%). It was mandatory for all the countries to use a mixed jury-public voting. In case of the country not being able to deliver a part of the voting, back-up juries were used to replace the missing part, that case can happen with televoting for small countries such as Andorra or San Marino if they fail to qualify for the Grand Final.

### Presentation of votes

In all the editions, all the participating countries have been voting in the final, including the countries that failed to qualify from the semi-finals.

The order of the voting nations from the different national juries are often randomly. After the interval act is over, when all the points have been calculated, the presenter(s) of the show call upon each voting country in turn to invite them to announce the results of their votes. The spokesperson of each country announce the twelve points of the jury voting while the televoting scores from all the countries are combined and presented by the presenters at the end of the night based on the results of the jury voting.

### Nul points and ties

Although it is almost impossible for a country to receive nul points there is a clear rule; If there are two or more countries with 'nul points', the one that has acted before will win the position to the other countries. On the other hand surely there will be many ties in the festival. In case of a tie between two or more countries, the country that received points from the most countries wins the tie. However, if the countries received points from the same number of countries, the number of 12 points is counted and if they are still tied it goes on until the tie breaks.

## Participants Top 10

The following table lists the countries that have participated in the contest. It shows how many times the country has participated in the contest and the number of top ten placing.

## Ranking Of Nations

This is the ranking released after the ninth edition