Outside of Europe, we are the only country and watches and actually gives a toss about it, but that's no reason for us to be able to compete. Did they confuse us with Austria? No wonder Americans are confused about geography.
And here is the real reason. I think we admire the absolutely daggy/kitch anti-contest that it sometimes presents. That, and the scantily dressed eastern european women "perfomers"........
Better that they “perform” there than on the side of an Italian highway.
Extremely stupid. As stupid as it is to have Israel as part of Europe.
It should have to do with geography, not ancestry.
I would also argue that Azerbaijan and Turkey are also not in Europe (most of Turkey is in Asia)
At least some of Turkey is in Europe…and I had no idea Azerbaijan was in the comp.
I haven’t seen it in 20 years.
There’s no logic involved. It’s not about Europe, it’s barely about vision, and it’s got nothing at all to do with song. It is what it is. They can make up any rules they want. Nobody cares.
You just defined them as the WADA of the entertainment world. Fair comment.
I normally don’t watch the final but I definitely watch the heats for the laughs. If you only watch the final you miss out on the dude in his underwear riding a unicorn (or similar).
Pondered this today, and realised hey! … Ireland Scotland England etc are other countries that aren’t in Europe, and yet are part of it,… & also, a little left field to be sure, but aren’t most of the songs if not all,performed in English??
That being the case, the argument could be made, that if they choose to use our language, for our consumption ( To “Shift more units”), then all English speaking countries should get a berth in it if they want it??
I think they did the jury/popular votes as they did to disguise the Eastern European Cartel. To some extent that worked, though you still saw some overtly nonsense calls by the juries (e.g. Malta giving 12 to England).
But in the end, Russia and the Ukraine (never the twain shall meet) still got the bulk of the popular votes, so it was only a transparent cover. Clearly neither of those two were in the top few songs, though Russia had one of the best stage gimmicks.
We can claim the moral victory, though. Stupid peasants screwing it up, hey VD? Why won’t they listen to their superiors?
(The popular vote politics is the best part of Eurovision, even if it has swung waaaay too far recently. You learn all sorts of things, like the sheer number of Turks living in Germany.)