Kiddy Contest Kids

The Austrian Broadcasting Corp., known in its home country as ORF, introduced the Kiddy Contest in 1995. At that time the format took an already familiar European practice of letting viewers vote on amateur musical performances and redirected it toward a younger audience. Although the various Idol franchises across the continent achieved enormous popularity, they consistently overlooked children below tween age. The Kiddy Contest addressed that omission by guiding participants through multiple audition stages in which they performed chosen songs, yet with an important modification: the entrants wrote new lyrics and sometimes devised fresh arrangements rather than delivering the originals intact. Eurovision entries, American pop hits, and Eurodance tracks were thereby transformed into material suitable for children by a final group of ten contestants between the ages of eight and thirteen. Each year these ten performers presented their versions during a live television broadcast that captured between 40 and 50 percent of the target demographic. The resulting tracks were subsequently compiled on a CD that achieved strong sales; unlike the American Kidz Bop series, the Kiddy Contest releases have frequently reached the top of the Austrian album chart and registered notable positions on the German chart. The fourteenth volume, released in 2008, debuted at number one in Austria.