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Running since 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest (in French: Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson) is an annual televised song contest with participants from numerous countries whose national television broadcasters are members of the European Broadcasting Union. The contest is broadcast on television and also radio throughout Europe. More recently, the contest has also been televised in other parts of the world and broadcast 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. Any member of the EBU may participate in the contest. This includes also countries of Africa and Asia as well as Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and Syria. Of these non-European nations, only Israel and Morocco have participated in the contest.
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 May 24, 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.
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 a 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 Teilifís 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 required 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 of 2004. This means that the previous restrictions on the number of countries that can participate will be dropped. Any EBU member country will be able to participate in any given year. The new format calls for the 10 most successful countries from the previous year along with the four biggest budget contributors to directly qualify for the final show. The remaining countries go through a qualification round from which the 10 best advance to the 24-nation final show.
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.
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 under the current rules there is no restriction on the nationality of the performers, allowing the Canadian Céline Dion to represent Switzerland, amongst many others. If an EBU country does not broadcast the Song Contest they are automatically disqualified for the next year.
Following the dominance of English language songs, particularly Sweden's 1974 victory (with Abba's Waterloo) , a rule was passed in 1977 that the song had to be sung in one of the official languages of the performing country. This resulted in rumours of some smaller countries declaring English an official language.
The rule was quashed in 1999, and Sweden immediately won again with another English song (Take Me To Your Heaven by Charlotte Nilsson).
Many small countries sing in English to reach broader audiences, though in bigger countries this is sometimes looked upon as unpatriotic.
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 most countries, national telephone polls are held during the broadcast in order to determine the number of points to be awarded to songs. Countries are not allowed to vote for themselves.
Until recently, votes were decided by small juries in each country rather than telephone polls. Since the advent of telephone voting, politics and geography have become increasingly important in the voting. Cyprus almost always gives its 12 points to Greece, and vice versa. Turkey always gets many points from Germany and the Netherlands, since many Turks live there and vote for their country. In 2004, France got 12 and 10 points respectively from its francophone neighbours Monaco and Belgium - more than half of its total points. The Baltic states always give many points to each other, as do the Scandinavians and the Balkan states. Despite this, the 2004 winner, Ukraine, was not part of any major voting bloc, receiving full marks from such diverse nations as Iceland, Israel, Estonia and Turkey. Many have criticized this system as with the exception of Ruslana's win, the same countries in the same area will win consistently.
The presenters of the contest connect by satellite to each country's jury in turn, inviting the spokesperson for each national jury to read out that country's votes in French or English. The presenters then repeat the votes in both English and French, following the formula: "Country name, number points. Nom du pays, nombre 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 - under the modern rules this means that the song failed to make the top ten most popular songs in any country. This is known to English speakers as nul points, after the Eurovision practice of reading out the results in both English and French.
Hosting the Eurovision Song Contest is an honour accorded to 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 RTÉ was reported to have experienced financial difficulties through having to host the contest four times in five years. The 2004 ESC has been allocated a budget of some €15 million and is the most expensive edition ever. However, the contest 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 Céline Dion are the only contest winners to have had significant international success.
The maximum duration of each song is three minutes, and the musicians and songs selected for the contest tend towards very conventional "bubblegum" pop. 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.
Note: (#) In 1969 four countries were joint winners as there was no rule for a tie.
As of 2004, the most successful country in the song contest has been Ireland who have won seven times. Close behind them with five wins each are France, Luxembourg and the UK.
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 on a Eurovision Song Contest for children was also held called Junior ESC in Denmark.
Between 1977 and 1980 the countries of the former Eastern bloc had a song contest of their own, known as the Intervision Song Contest. Organized by the Intervision Network and held in Sopot, Poland, it replaced an earlier event - the Sopot International Song Festival.
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