I guess that Conchita’s message of inclusion and acceptance of people of all different types was lost on you then? 
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Political and cultural ties to Europe. The show had a strong following in Australia for many years and this led to an invitation to participate in the 60th anniversary followed by inclusion until at least 2023.
I think it would be fantastic if other nations were to join on a similar basis.
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I can’t bring myself to watch the full contest, but it does offer a hint of morbid curiosity for me. I tend to record the contest and watch small clips from each song until I give up the will to live and skip to the next one.
The Eurovision Song Contest has a pretty low bar to live up to, but I personally thought that this year’s batch was absolutely appalling even by Eurovision standards. Almost certainly the worst batch of songs in the 50 or so years that I have watched the contest.
In fact, there were only 2 songs (from France and Sweden) that didn’t have me snatching at the remote control after around 15 seconds to skip to the next song in self preservation - they really were that mind-numbingly bad.
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I might be completely wrong, but sense Eurovision is almost normalising quality wise with fairly dire popular music globally. Have a stunning/attractive female vocalist or several and a pretty formulaic unmemorable song and it seems to be the stuff people like. There were a group of 3 very attractive ladies singing, but the non-lead singer with ginger hair stood out to me as the better vocalist of the bunch.
Quite a few of the ‘male’ singers just weren’t very masculine, I was semi-watching and came in from the garden after putting some tools away and was a bit surprised to see the female vocalist I could hear outside was actually a bloke (I think it was Spain’s entry). Nothing wrong with his higher vocal range of course, though I did sense that there might have been some positive bias in act selection from several countries last night.
I mentioned earlier I thought there were a few nods to Linkin Park - I was in the home office doing a bit of work earlier and could hear music from my daughter’s room. I went in and said ‘You’re listening to Linkin Park’, she said ‘No, it’s Sweden’. Odd.
I went to a professional European conference a few years ago - there was a diversity theme which I felt was a really nice touch, and Conchita was headlining the end of conference party - unfortunately I didn’t get tickets as our flights left too early for it.
I think it’s interesting that Eurovision has become so linked with diversity generally, and what has always made it enjoyable for me has been seeing glimpses of other cultures both musically and in the introductions to their acts to amazing places I’ve never visited - in recent years it shows how global music has generally become too.
Just wondered if anyone else thinks that the U.K. paying around £300,000 pounds a year to enter this absurd contest ,could be money better spent elsewhere? When the over 75’s are having their free tv licenses removed, it seems wrong to me.
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There is the argument that not paying to automatically get into the final round would be better, however I think it’s ‘small change’ to have a Eurovision presence. Ideally all participating countries should pay, have a final round presence, with reduced costs for the 5 paying countries.
Yeah and if the BBC stopped laying out cash to produce any TV or radio programmes at all, then I bet the licence would be much more affordable.
They could start with Binning Mrs Brown’s Boys.
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Add Question Time to that, it’s done nothing but raise my BP for several years now. This Week was the ultimate chill out politcial show.
I think that’s about what they pay Gary Lineker for reading the autocue four times a month in the football season. Not that it’s any better value for money, of course.
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Why not work on the basis of everybody pays and he who pays the most, wins !
Simple.
It does seem unfair though that the UK gets a free pass to the final round by being a ‘paying member’, Germany are too and both countries genrally choose tripe.
Thinking about this a little more, I honestly think not.
The sum is a pittance to attempt more cohesivness and mutual appreciation amongst a diverse target audience.
With the £350M a week that Britain is now saving after Bxit, i guess that yearly £300K for Eurovision shouldn’t be an issue right??
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Dodgy ground, but I suspect it’s the BBC that are paying not ‘UK Gov PLC’.
Loving the apparent confusion between hoovering up some of Bolivia’s finest with some tidying up of broken glass…
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Your forgetting the new hospital being built every week with that £350m saving…
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I would avoid thread drift, especially into politics.
£300,000 of licence payers’ fees is one thing, (which I don’t begrudge). I am assuming the “big five” got the whole show off the ground c.65 years ago and this is just part and parcel of that legacy and its associated priveliges. I seem to recall the UK didn’t join until a year or two after the start.
I assume that everybody contributes to the annual show and it’s not just the host nation (aka last year’s winner) that foots the venue bill ?
…and close BBC1 down for the evening? £300k is quite cheap for an hour’s tv production. This ‘waste’ gets us the semi finals over a couple of evenings in the week on BBC4, 3 hours of prime Saturday audience draw with v high production values, plus all the Radio 2 coverage. It will be a very cost effective decision to cough up the money for that. Obviously they could run a repeat or three instead, which would provide an alternate avenue of complaint.
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