Representative appearances

• Can South Africa Sustain its Economic Rebound? | Next Africa

  This program was produced by Adrien Bradley.

• Several countries boycott Eurovision after Israel allowed to compete | BBC

  Let's cross live to Eurovvision broadcaster Adrien Bradley. And Adrian, you've been following Eurovvision for so many years. I wanted to ask you, where does this leave the contest? Can it survive without these countries? I think the contest can survive and there will be uh a Eurovvision Song Contest in Vienna next year, but it will be a very different contest. Spain are one of the biggest one of the biggest members of the EBU. the they if you were in the audience when you're at a Eurovvision the Spanish fans are among the biggest uh contingent of fans that are there along with the British and of course the Dutch fans who also the Netherlands won't be showing and they won't and neither of these countries will be broadcasting uh Eurovvision next year either which are big parts of the audience that make Eurovvision the biggest entertainment TV show in the world so big parts of the audience won't be watching Eurovision next year and it will be a very different contest. I think the what what a lot of people will be watching will be about these changes and these new rules and to see whether they have any teeth and and what effect they have and if countries are seem to uh break the rules or do things that are against the rules if there are promotions of campaigns what will happen then I think that will be what people will be watching very closely. Yeah. So for the benefit of the audience, Adrian, just talk to me about those rules because there was no vote today on whether Israel can participate, but there was a vote on the rules around how countries broadcasters promote their own songs. So talk me through exactly what was voted on today because that vote placated some worries, didn't it, among some member countries. Yeah, there were two key areas in this uh in these new rules. One was about voting and before today uh every uh payment method whether it was your phone or a credit card you had 20 votes per payment method. They've h haveved that. They've reduced that to 10. But they also passed regulations to ban um the promotion of artists by third parties or by governments and the involvement in artists and uh broadcasters in that. Now, there was a lot of criticism about adverts that were placed on YouTube channels promoting the Israeli act um last year and a number of the broadcasters had raised complaints about that. So, a number of new rules have been brought in that seek to make clear that this is against the rules. Where it is less clear is what how it will be judged what will happen if people do break the rules and how that will be assessed. There were also clearer rules put in to using songs and song lyrics and staging to make political statements as well. And there've had been some criticism about that in the past for a number of entries. And again, a lot of the questions will then come in these rules being enforced and how they are enforced. But it will be a very different contest next year. We have the four countries already confirmed to have pulled out. Are we expecting any more to announce before that deadline that David Silito was talking about? I think I think uh there will likely be some more. I think Iceland have been very clear about their position in the run-up to this vote. They said that they are going to meet their board will meet and make a decision before Wednesday. Belgium uh another broadcaster that has been quite uh critical of Israel taking part. Uh Belgium is complicated because there's two broadcasters where they alternate between a French and a Flemish um broadcaster. Next year's turn is the turn of the French broadcaster. They're the ones that are deciding uh whether or not they will take part. The uh Dutch side, the Flemish side said they will broadcast it uh but they want to see whether the rules have any teeth before deciding what they'll do in 2027. Those are the two that we know. We also believe that Portugal are yet to make a decision and will make a decision before Wednesday's announcement.

• Can South Africa Tackle Its Gender Based Violence Crisis? | Next Africa

  Producer of the podcast program.