Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual showcase of songs, running since May 24, 1956 and broadcast on television (but mainly radio in the first few years) throughout Europe. More recently, it has also been shown in other parts of the world and on the internet. The contest's name comes from the Eurovision TV Distribution Network, which is run by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and can reach a potential television audience of more than one billion. The song contest can be entered by any member of the EBU which includes countries such as Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and just recently Georgia which are not in Europe.
Based on the San Remo Music Festival, the first Eurovision Song Contest was the brainchild of the European Broadcasting Union. The first contest took place in 1956, when seven of the original invitees participated (the other three were disqualified for late entry). The original participants were France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Switzerland. They were joined the next year by the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Austria ("the Procrastinators"), and in 1959 by Monaco.
History
The 2002 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday 26 June, 2002, hosted by Annely Peebo, an opera singer, and Marko Matvere, an actor.
For the 2002 edition, the Spanish TVE created an reality show Operación Triunfo that showed the selection and training of unknown singers. At the end, one of them would be elected by the public to represent the country in the contest. The format was an enormous success in Spain and is being exported. One of the first of these exports was the Irish You're A Star, run on Radio Telifís Éireann over Winter 2002/'03 for the 2003 Contest.
The 2003 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Riga, Latvia on Saturday 24 May, 2003, hosted by Marie N, the singer who won the ESC 2002, and Renars Kaupers, a singer whose group competed in the ESC 2000.
Up until 2003 entry to the Eurovision song contest also requires the country to have performed with a reasonable amount of success for the previous few years. Because of the size of their contribution to the EBU budget, France, Germany, Spain and the UK automatically qualify regardless of how poorly their songs perform.
At the beginning of 2003 the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decided to make the Eurovision Song Contest a two day event as from 2004. This means that the previous restrictions for countries to participate will be dropped. Any EBU member country will be able to participate in any given year.
Starting with the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest which is to be held in Istanbul in May 2004, all EBU member countries may participate. For the first time, the show will be broadcast live on two evenings. The most successful countries are directly qualified for the final show whereas the remaining countries will have to go through a qualification heat. From the qualification round the 15 best placed countries will join the directly qualified ones. In the final show a total of 25 nations will take part.
Rules
Number of songs
Initially each country was allowed to submit two three-minute (or less) songs, performed by inhabitants of the respective country. By the 1960s, entries were limited to one song per country (participation in the contest had almost doubled), and the songs had to be sung in one of the national languages of the country. Participation continued to grow through the 1980s, and by the turn of the century the rules had been changed several times to both limit the number of finalists and to allow for the new independent republics that arose from the former Eastern bloc nations.
Performers
Current rules state, that countries are only allowed to have six performers on stage and that performers must be aged 16 or more, on the 31st of December in the year of the contest. It is worth noting that due to the current rules there is no restriction on the nationality or the language of the performers, allowing the Australian Olivia Newton-John, for instance, to represent the UK in the contest, and Canadian Celine Dion to represent Switzerland, amongst many others. Many small countries sing in English to reach broader audiences, though in bigger countries this is sometimes looked upon as unpatriotic. If a EBU country does not broadcast the Song Contest they are automatically disqualified for the next year.
Judging
An international process
The winner of the contest is decided by each country assigning points (currently 1 to 8, 10 and 12) to their favourite ten entries. In some countries, phone polls are held during the telecast in order to decided how the country should award its points. Countries are not allowed to vote for themselves.
The conductors do a round of satellite connections to the speaker for each country jury, that proceeds to read their votes. Then the conductors repeats them in English and French, using this stereotyped structure: "Country name, number points. Nom du pays, nombre points".
Nul points
Since each of the entrant countries casts a series of votes, it is only rarely that a song has failed to have any votes at all cast for it. This is known to English speakers as nul points, after the Eurovision practice of reading out the results in both English and French.
- In 1978, Jahn Teigen achieved nul points for his song for Norway.
- In 2003 the UK contestants, Jemini, scored nul points for their entry. This caused slight consternation in the UK (see the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 entry for more details).
Hosts
Hosting the Eurovision Song Contest is an honour accorded the winners of the previous year -- although it means that the winner's home broadcaster actually incurs heavy expenses as a result of winning and this has led to suggestions that some nations deliberately choose substandard acts so as to ensure they do not win. In the early 1990s the Irish broadcaster RTE was reported to have experienced considerable financial difficulties through having to host the contest four times in five years. The 2004 ESC is budgeted to appr. Euro 15 million, being the most expensive edition ever. However, the Eurovision is considered a unique show case for launching the host country as a tourist destination.´
Many pop singers and groups have begun the path to fame with a win at the contest. However ABBA and Celine Dion are the only contest winners to have had significant international success.
Music
The musicians and songs selected for the contest tend towards very conventional "bubblegum" pop, and voting patterns often show more about the ethnic prejudices and politics of various European nations than to the quality of the music. For instance, British and French entries tend to do very poorly in each other's poll. Turkey and Greece generally snub each other. Turkish acts poll well in Germany due to the large population of Turkish expatriates there. Greece and Cyprus usually award each other maximum points. Many viewers of the contest view the event as a combination of camp entertainment and a musical train wreck (a fact played upon in the English-language broadcast with the sardonic BBC commentary of Terry Wogan) and a subculture of Eurovision song contest drinking games and the like has evolved in some countries.
Winners
Note: (#) In 1969 four countries were joint winners as there was no rule for a tie.
As of 2003, the most successful country in the song contest has been Ireland who have won seven times. Close behind them with five wins are France, Luxembourg and the UK.
Junior Eurovision Song Contests
Denmark originally held a song contest for children in 2000 then it organised a Nordic Children's Eurovision. The EBU saw clips of the show and liked it so decided to create an official Children's Eurovision.
From 2003 there will also be held an Eurovision Song Contest for children called Junior ESC in Denmark.
Intervision Song Contest
The countries of the former Eastern bloc were organising between 1977 and 1980 their own song contest called Intervision Song Contest. The Intervision Network organised it in Sopot, Poland, changing the name of the older song festival - the Sopot International Song Festival.
External links
Referenced By
1956 | 1956 in music | 1957 in music | 1958 in music | 1959 in music | 1960 in music | 1961 in music | 1962 in music | 1963 in music | 1964 in music | 1965 in music | 1966 in music | 1967 in music | 1968 in music | 1969 in Music | 1970 in music | 1970s in music | 1971 in music | 1972 in music | 1973 in music | 1974 in music | 1975 in music | 1976 (music) | 1976 in music | 1977 in music | 1979 in music | 1980 in music | 1981 in music | 1982 in music | 1983 in music | 1984 in music | 1985 in music | 1986 in music | 1987 in music | 1988 in music | 1992 Eurovision Song Contest | 1992 in music | 1993 in music | 1994 in music | 1995 in music | 1996 in music | 1997 in music | 1998 in music | 1999 in music | 2000 in music | 2001 in music | 2002 | 2002 in music | 2003 in music | 2004 in music | 24 May | 24th May | ABBA | A song for Europe | Abba (band) | Abi and Esther Ofarim | Afro-dite | As of 2002 | British Broadcasting Corporation/Programming | Bucks Fizz | Carola | Carola Häggkvist | Catherine Boyle | Celine Dion | Civilian award | Claudia Beni | Cliff Richard | Corinna May | Croatian music | Culture of Israel | Céline Dion | Dana | Dana (singer) | Dana International | Dana Rosemary Scallon | Dermot Morgan | Dschinghis Khan | Esther Hart | Esther Ofarim | European Broadcasting Union | Eurovision | Eurovision Song Contest 1981 | Eurovision Song Contest 1982 | Eurovision Song Contest 1983 | Eurovision Song Contest 1984 | Eurovision Song Contest 1985 | Eurovision Song Contest 1986 | Eurovision Song Contest 1987 | Eurovision Song Contest 1988 | Eurovision Song Contest 1989 | Eurovision Song Contest 1990 | Eurovision Song Contest 1991 | Eurovision Song Contest 1992 | Eurovision Song Contest 1993 | Eurovision Song Contest 1994 | Eurovision Song Contest 1995 | Eurovision Song Contest 1996 | Eurovision Song Contest 1998 | Eurovision Song Contest 2000 | Eurovision Song Contest 2001 ...
|
