I posted about the ESC in the Friday Fun thread, and then started thinking about it more deeply in the sense of "Can it even be explained?", so I jotted down 9 different aspects of it.
In 2023 there were 37 countries sending an artist or a band performing one song, with the assorted light show and/or pyrotechnics. Apart from the Big Five – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK, which automatically participate – and the last year’s winning country, i.e., the host country, most of the other nations will have to first pass a semifinal, organized on the Tuesday and Thursday of the ESC week, to participate on the Grand Final, which is on Saturday. The results of the semifinals and the Grand Final are decided by a combination of televoting and juries, using a complicated scoring mechanism partly explained below.
ESC has gone on for 67 years now, starting from a contest for a few West European Nations and suddenly exploding in size when the Wall fell, Yugoslavia and Soviet Union crumbled to pieces and suddenly tens of Eastern European nations poured in. It is this Eastern explosion that fully set the stage for how Eurovision evolved, as these nations brought in a lot of new interesting political interrelations and a new sense of showmanship and extravaganza, quickly embraced by the Eurovision community.
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Notes -
Twelve. Don't try to use the British "fanbase" or UK broadcast as a language-friendly gateway to understanding Eurovision. Although we all watch it, there is some combination of the British not quite "getting" Eurovision and treating it as an opportunity to point and laugh at the wacky Continentals, and us being jaded because the politics of the voting means that we don't normally stand a chance. Part of the problem is that this causes us to not take the national contest to choose a song seriously (given the quality of our domestic pop music scene, we send shockingly poor acts), but the worst bit is that it makes the British broadcast and the culture of watching it with drunken Brits unfortunately cynical. The most obvious symptom was Terry Wogan's commentary from 1971-2008 - he started drinking when the curtain went up, got ruder and ruder about the songs as he got drunker, and then said the quiet part out loud at every opportunity when it came to complaining about biased voting.
Thirteen. The host (who is normally the previous year's winner) is responsible for meeting all the costs of the event, and gets very little back from the broadcast. (the ESC is shown ad-free on state-owned broadcasters in most EBU-member countries). For small countries which do well, this leads to a different sort of jadedness where the national broadcaster is trying to ensure that their country loses deliberately for financial reasons (but is generally not able to say this to its viewers, who like winning). Ireland is the most famous example where eventually the cynicism got through to the viewers.
If you want an English-language introduction to Eurovision that captures what Eurovision-watching should be, I recommend the Australian broadcast. But the best way to watch it is as a noob to join an existing Eurovision-watching party hosted by someone who grew up in Continental Europe.
Fourteen. The culture of Eurvision-watching is gay in every possible sense of the world, including the old-fashioned one of being gratuitously, flamboyantly happy.
Fifteen. The final scores at the end of the voting are never read out (in English or French), so "nul points" as a metaphor for getting no votes at all is a "Beam me up Scotty"/"Play it again, Sam" misquote.
Can you elaborate on this point?
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