Should we bother taking part in Eurovision anymore?

[Rewdna 778]

For those of you who aren't familiar with it.The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual 'music',and I use the word loosely,contest broadcast around Europe where countries compete against each other with their chosen national delegate.They each perform and then each country votes for each song on a points system followed by a public vote to decide the eventual winner.I should add for the past few years,bizarrely Australia have been allowed to compete.It has been going for a very long time and has become less about the songs and more about neighbouring countries voting for each other and political statements,in my own opinion.

The latest instalment was broadcast,live from Tel Aviv,Israel last night,as they won the previous years contest and so had the right to host it.This caused  controversy and protests before it even started because of the whole Palestein issue.There was even an on screen protest from the Icelandic entry,which was quickly jumped on by the host broadcasters.After all the increasingly bizzare performances,including an incredibly out of tune and frankly embarrassing interlude performance from none other than Madonna,the voting began.

After what seemed like an entire lifetime,the eventual winner was revealed as The Netherlands who were tipped as favourites before the contest started.To me,it was an instantly forgettable song and already,will have been forgotten by many,including myself.Well done to the young male singer anyway.Unsurprisngly The United Kingdom,where I come from finished LAST!! Again a young guy who did his best,but stood no chance.Not just because of his singing,which was ok ,but as the final public vote proved Brexit clearly worked against us.Basically it was political I'm sure.So there you have it.If you didn't watch it,quite frankly you were one of the lucky ones.

So...to sum up.Is it time for it to be scrapped,or should the big broadcasters such as the BBC stop ploughing money into it ,or just stop broadcasting it and leave the other European nations to it? I know it is meant to be a bit of fun and cheesy and an excuse to have a laugh(which we all need right now in this country anyway),but seriously has it gone too far from the original concept?

Sorry for the long post,but I thought it would be interesting to get some views.Alternatively,if you never knew the thing existed,you do now! 

Thanks for reading.

[Gotah 2,208]

I always enjoyed watching it, mostly because it's such a bizzare event where it's so much fun (and easy) to tell jokes about the contestants and the event itself, and even though 90% of the songs are pure crap there are always a couple of great acts that stand out which make the competition worth watching.

However, the constant political influence is definetly an annoying feature that makes the event less and less attractive even though this year I think they managed to keep everything much "cleaner" than in the past editions, the only heavy political thing that stood out was, as you said, iceland with the palestinian flag but all in all I was positively surprised about how normal (for eurovison standards) it actually was.

As for the winner, I was pretty happy about it, because I felt like this time "real" music won. It wasn't an annoyingly excentric, over the top, performance by some weird "artist" as we used to see in the past, but just a guy with a piano and an amazing voice. You can like the song or not, I thought it was really good, but as you hopefully know music is a very subjective thing, so what one might love does somebody else maybe hate to death. Bottom line, it's impossible to do something that EVERYONE likes, this doesn't only apply to music but also for probably everything that we have on this world including the song contest itself.

That's why I personally think that there's no point for TV channels to stop broadcasting it simply because there's millions of people who love eurovision and would be pretty pissed if they couldn't watch it anymore.

And besides it's not that we are forced to watch it, so if we don't want to we just watch something else and ignore it.

 

As I said, I enjoy the event and I am gonna keep watching it as long as there's good music in the competition and it doesn't get way to political ... Or I don't have better things to do haha.

Edited May 19, 2019 by Gotah

[F.W 5,650]

I dont watch it,i think its a big old continental gayfest.Which is about right.

Im honoured that our European "friends" dont vote for UK anymore.It only shows how much contempt they have for us,as we have either defeated or liberated most of them from each other time after time over the last 800 years,i guess they are jealous of us or something,and now they hate us leaving their little club.So,yes,keep it going,and enjoy.

[F.W 5,650]

By the way,i dont think EVER in the past 500 million years that AUSTRALIA,has ever been connected to Europe.Even when it was all one landmass,Pangaea about 300 million years ago,it was still thousands of miles away....How the hell does AUSTRALIA count as Europe?

[steve25805 121,109]

The voting has long since been outrageously political and has next to fuck all to do with the songs in many cases.

But like many on the British left I boycotted it entirely this year. I take moral exception to enjoying a song contest hosted by a nation whose armed forces are regularly committing war crimes against unarmed civilians.

[lovestoseepee 292]

I am not sure I have ever watched a complete show of this as it doesn't really interest me. I have seen bits of it over the years. So if any particular country stopped taking part it wouldn't be a loss to me. I probably wouldn't even notice it as I am not a regular viewer of it. I didn't even watch it this year. Also I agree not sure how Australia can take part unless it's something to do with being a member of the commonwealth. But I agree it's crazy and I don't understand it myself.

[Rewdna 778]

As far as i know,and I may be wrong,the reason  Australia was allowed to enter was of it's liberal views.Also,i believe that if they were to have won it would not be held in Australia the following year.I heard somewhere that the popularity of the show was massive in Australia,as it was shown there and they wanted to be part of it.Again,I'm not certain on that one.It does seem very bizzare but I guess it adds to the quirky element.