Can anyone explain The Eurovision Song Contest to me. What is it about, why does it exist?

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), in which participating countries each submit a song to be performed on live television. They then proceed to cast scores for the other countries' songs (10 scores altogether—ranging from 1 to 12 points), in order to find the most popular song in the competition. Each country participates via one of their national EBU-member television stations, whose task it is to select a singer and a song to go forward to represent the country in the international competition.





The Contest has been broadcast every year since its inauguration in 1956, and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is also one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world,[1] with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally.[2][3] It has been broadcast around the globe—beyond Europe—to such places as Australia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Korea, and the United States, even though these countries do not participate.[4][5] Since the year 2000, the Contest has also been broadcast over the Internet,[6] with more than 74,000 people in almost 140 countries having watched the 2006 edition online.[7]





The Contest is known for being a bastion of formulaic, camp, and often comically poor pop music. However, the prevalence of such songs and the show's tongue-in-cheek approach to competition have only served to develop it an international cult following. In addition to mainstream pop music, Eurovision has featured a vast, diverse array of songs, including such musical genres as Arab, Balkan, Celtic, Dance, Folk, German, Israeli, Greek, Latin, Nordic, Pop-rap, Rock, and Turkish. Occasionally, nationally famous recording artists use the show to successfully increase their international recognition (such as ABBA [Sweden 1974] and Celine Dion [Switzerland 1988]).





Suspicions and accusations of tactical and political voting are as old as the contest itself. Evidence suggests that the voting patterns of many countries (or groups of states) tend to be highly correlated. This is usually attributed to geographical proximity (e.g. Nordic countries, Greece-Cyprus, UK-Ireland, Balkan states etc). However, these cliques are not always the expected ones, nor can their existence be explained solely on the grounds of geographical proximity. Other factors include, but are not limited to, cultural, linguistic and religious similarities or differences.





Over the years, the Song Contest has grown from a mere televisual experiment into an international institution. Most countries in Europe have taken part at least once during the Contest's history, and such is the magnitude and scale of the Contest that the word "Eurovision" is one of the few household names to be recognised across an entire continent. It is, however, almost unknown in Italy, a country that has not participated in the contest for the last 10 years.

Can anyone explain The Eurovision Song Contest to me. What is it about, why does it exist?
have you SEEN the clothes and heard the songs? how can anything like that have anything to do with politics.





eurovision is each country showing that all of their music is the same- but with different language and dodgy costumes. and then voting for your own. if you can be bothered. england couldnt. they stayed in bed. good on them.





we have some great indie bands here in england, we should take advantage of it.
Reply:Your American, right?


Most of the EU countries take part in a big singing contest, basically that's it.





PS: heres the UK entry





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6FmisoHS...
Reply:So that you can squirm when the uk entry comes on and chortle at Terry Wogan's sarcasm.
Reply:at the risk of getting another violation i will try its a lot of rubbish singers singing rubbish songsit only exists to annoy me,,
Reply:How do I explain the Pukevision song contest? I can't, sorry, you'll have to watch it for yourself.
Reply:politics and politics.





nothing but old men trying to be funny.
Reply:Its B*llocks!!!