CALL it Putinvision. The Cold War of the bands.
Russia's prime minister has long sought to build military ties with his country's eastern neighbours as a counterweight to Nato.
But now he has proposed that East challenge West in a head-to-head battle of the song contests, suggesting on Thursda
y that Russia, China and some Central Asian countries launch a competition similar to the Eurovision Song Contest.
However, organisers of Eurovision yesterday reminded Vladimir Putin that he can't create a televised pan-regional songfest without buying the intellectual property rights from them.
"We own the rights to an international song contest. We would be happy to sell the format to prime minister Putin," Bjoern Erichsen, a director with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), said.
Russia is still heady with pride after hosting the continent's most popular music competition in May, watched by 125 million.
Mr Putin first suggested creating a Eurasian version in China this week, saying the new televised battle of the bands, which he dubbed "Intervision", would strengthen ties among members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, or SCO, a regional economic and political pact.
"In the world of television, if you come up with an idea of a TV show, you cannot just imitate the format and take it over in exactly the same way with minor changes," Sietse Bakker, a spokesman for EBU, said.
But it appears Mr Erichsen and Mr Putin are not singing the same tune.
"There's no talk about copying Eurovision and, as a consequence, anybody's copyright," Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.
Mr Peskov also downplayed Mr Putin's role, saying it was "an initiative of the SCO nations."
