BURSTLast May, when Eurovision broadcast the musical competition’s semifinals, viewers at home noticed something strange. During rehearsals with a live audience earlier in the week, audience members loudly booed singer Eden Golan, the Israeli entrant whose participation stirred a controversy due to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza.
When Golan performed live for television on May 9, 2024, however, viewers at home heard no audible boos at all. Had the audiences had a sudden change of heart over a few short days? Commenters online didn’t think so, and speculation ran rampant that the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, which produces Eurovision, had censored boos from the live show.
There was booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!”
In statements at the time, EBU insisted it had not censored any audience reactions.
“Just like in all major TV productions with an audience, SVT” — the national broadcaster in Sweden, where the 2024 Eurovision was hosted — “work on the broadcast sound to even out the levels for TV viewers,” the EBU told HuffPost UK. “This is solely to achieve as balanced a sound mix as possible for the audience; and SVT do not censor sound from the arena audience.”
An analysis of the original broadcast audio feeds by The Intercept shows that there was indeed booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!” during the recording. While the cheers from the audience feed remain prominent in the broadcast mix of the audio, neither the booing nor the pro-Palestine slogan were audible in the version of the performance viewers heard at home.
Listen to clips of both audio feeds below. Enable closed captions for notations of audience reactions.
The EBU did not respond to a request for comment.
Golan’s run at Eurovision drew controversy as the death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza mounted. Despite a campaign to exclude Israel, Golan advanced to the finals with her pop song “Hurricane,” ultimately placing fifth. The isolated audience audio from that event was too glitchy to determine whether any boos were also suppressed in the final mix. The song, originally titled “October Rain,” was initially barred from Eurovision, prior to undergoing a title and lyric adjustment for violating the contest’s rules on political neutrality with its reference to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
In an interview shortly after last year’s Eurovision competition, Golan was played an online video of booing during her live-audience rehearsal.
“Well, that happened in every single performance,” Golan said in response. “There were some days that were more extreme.”
Golan said she was prepared for a negative reaction and had hoped her in-ear monitors for live performances would block out the crowd noises.
“And I was very wrong,” she said, “because after the first rehearsal with the audience I remember not hearing myself, only hearing the boos and the screaming and the yelling.”
Nonpolitical?
Eurovision is the world’s premier international music competition. Under the auspices of their respective national broadcasters, artists from around the globe — originally Europe, but since expanded — come together for over-the-top performances watched by tens of millions of fans. Last year, some 160 million people watched the events on television.
Ahead of last year’s event, dueling letter campaigns and petitions supported and decried Israeli participation. More than 1,000 Swedish artists signed a letter urging Israel’s exclusion, while more than 400 Hollywood celebrities penned a letter supporting Israel.
In the end, the EBU said it conducted a review and decided Israel could be involved.
“The Eurovision song contest is a non-political music event and a competition between public service broadcasters who are members of the EBU,” Noel Curran, the EBU director general, told The Guardian at the time. “It is not a contest between governments.”
More than 56,000 people signed a petition calling for Israel to be banned from the current season of Eurovision, while 72 former Eurovision contestants signed a letter urging the EBU to exclude Israel and its broadcaster, KAN, from the competition. The EBU again decided Israel may participate.
The contest has, in the past, made exclusions based on circumstances apparently linked to geopolitics. In 2022, it barred Russia from competing in the song contest, stating that “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine, the inclusion of a Russian entry in this year’s Contest would bring the competition into disrepute.”
Last year, EBU published a list of frequently asked questions titled “FAQ: Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024,” stating that Russia was suspended from Eurovision owing to unspecified allegations of “consistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service media values.”
Audio Analysis
The Intercept was able to uncover the suppression of audible discontent with Israel at last year’s Eurovision by examining various feeds sent out by the competition organizers for broadcast across the globe.
When the local host country’s national broadcaster — in last year’s case Sweden and SVT, respectively — produce Eurovision, they collect multiple audio feeds: such as one for the performers, one for the audience, and one for announcer voices. The broadcaster then does a live mix of the three audio feeds into a single stereo mix.
The stereo mix is beamed up to a satellite using a multichannel format which Eurovision has been experimenting with since 2004. The video feed is also sent on a separate channel. The system allows a streamlined approach for local broadcasters around the globe to access the feeds and put the program on their stations.
Along with the final stereo mix and video feeds, however, the EBU also beams the raw audio feeds on different channels. Local broadcasters can then make their own mixes of the audio feeds — though in practice, local stations usually use the provided stereo feed.
Much like anyone can readily record over-the-air television broadcasts so long as they have equipment like an antenna and a recording device, so too can anyone record satellite signals if they have the requisite equipment. While many modern satellite feeds are encrypted, Eurovision appears to have opted for a format which is more readily compatible with older equipment, stating at a press briefing that “to send signal out to the juries during those shows and amongst our different members, technology differs in how modern it is.”
The Intercept was able to review the raw audio feeds from Golan’s performance and compare the isolated audience noise to the final stereo mix.
An audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
The audio feeds were compared using the time encoding that allows broadcasters to sync up the sound and picture. On the audience feed, cheers swell up from time to time, along with whistles and other noises of audience approval. These swells and other noises correspond between the audience feed and the stereo mix.
Notes of crowd disapproval, however, are present on the audience feed but completely absent from the stereo mix. At one point in the feed at the start of Israel’s performance, scattered boos well up on the audience feed, while the corresponding timestamp in the stereo mix has no audience sound. Likewise, at the start of the performance, an audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
This year’s performer representing Israel, Yuval Raphael, has said that she expected to be booed and practiced with distracting sounds play in the background. Conflicting news accounts of Raphael’s performance claimed alternatively that the show went on “relatively without a hitch,” in one case, and in another that footage shared on social media showed booing that was not audible in the broadcast.
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