Saturday was the most important event in the European gay calendar
The Eurovision Song Contest- you can read the full details about it and the history on the
Eurovision Wiki Entry. Basically its done by the
European Broadcast Union (EBU) which is a union of countries to help broadcast worldwide sporting events and international events and help the countries with much less media technology or money and entries to the competition include none European countries including Israel and in the past Morocco who are members of the EBU. The competition started in Switzerland in 1956 and the UK joined the next year! The idea is each country enters a pop song and then the other countries all vote and there is a winner and league table at the end. Abba were famous for winning in the past with "Waterloo".
There is so many countries now in the competition that its split up into a semi-final and a final! Each country has their own selection process where the citizens vote out of a choice of songs of who to represent them. Then it goes through. The UK, Spain, France and Germany put the most funding into the EBU and basically fund the entire contest so they are automatically through to the final of the competition each year. In the semi-final 28 countries battle it out to be in the final, and the top 10 go through to the final, plus the big 4 and also the top 10 finishing countries of the year before, so there is then 24 countries in the final. Each country plays their song live and then voting is done by televoting and sms (traditionally each country had a panel, like the Oscars and there is still a panel in case the voting linguistics in that country collapses).
This years show was in Helsinki in Finland after Finland won last year (the winner hosts the next years show, which is bad if you are quite a poor country and have to host it, or if you are Ireland who have won the most times and have had to pay each time to host it!). I think the theme this year was transvestites and gender bending there was so many entries which used this theme!
But then comes the controversy and the problem. Europe is changing and many former countries are splitting up and there is millions of new countries, eg Yugoslavia, the USSR, the Baltic's etc and there is now mass bloc voting. Its starting to really annoy me now because basically the Western and "traditionally" European countries have no chance of winning. All the neighbouring old connected countries vote highly for each other. Its not voting on which song you like the most.
Its been said for many years that Eurovision is dying because people are increasingly getting pissed off but on the BBC they got 10million viewers on Saturday which is still very good. It still has UK viewers. but we do awfully! We came second last!
I loved our entry this year!
they are were so fabulous, camp and cheesy. I felt it really suited everything about the song contest. Its fun, its cheesy, its not serious classical music competing. I loved the song! We came second last with 19 points! Only Malta and Ireland love us! Ireland came last but had a truly awful song.
The winning song was....
I am really sad :( I really like Bulgaria, Georgia, Belarus, Romania and Ukraine whom had this fabulous drag queen.....
In previous years its been said the whole contest is political. eg people are not voting for the UK because of the Iraq war and supporting George Bush and I have agreed with that. We last won in 1997! But in shock news I have changed my mind this year. Some of the other countries also supported America and Bush in Iraq, including Poland and others who were not affected. I don't think its deliberately political, I think they just vote for their neighbours and countries like the UK and the old Western Europe is ignored in the voting, rather that deliberate malice. Also they choose entries who are locally very popular who all the former USSR countries say know.
This year seems to be the most controversial of all! Italy is also one of the biggest EBU funders and have not taken part since 1996 as they say Italy is "passionate about their many singer-songwriters" and do not want to take part. Ireland and Malta are furious after doing badly and are "reviewing entering" according to the Eurovision Fansite
ESCtoday and Sweden and several other countries are furious. Next year no Scandinavian countries automatically go through to the final!
I think we could enter any song and just come last now! Lots of countries are demanding changes and I am not sure how they could change it? maybe two contests east and west Europe or maybe the songs are anonymous and so no one knows where the song they are voting for is from (they can sing the song in any European language). I love Eurovision but its not a competition where the best or most popular song wins anymore, its bloc country voting to support each other ,and the Eastern European countries far outweigh the West these days!
All the press and UK media are now attacking our entry as being awful. Well the UK public choose that song out of a selection of lots of different types of song as their favourite. The same thing happens every year now since 2003, we do terribly and our entry is attacked by all the British press/ media. I like the United Europe thing but The contest needs to change to be a fair contest
Tags: europe, eurovision, music, uk
Current Mood: 
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Current Music: Scooch - Flying the Flag
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