- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision after Israel was given the all-clear to compete in the 2026 song contest despite calls by several participating broadcasters for its exclusion over the war in Gaza.
No vote on Israel’s participation was held on Thursday at the general assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that organises the hugely popular international annual singing competition.
Instead, participating broadcasters voted only to introduce new rules designed to stop governments and third parties from disproportionately promoting songs to influence voters.
Honest question from a USian: is the Eurovision competition honestly a big thing with most people or is this hyped up by the media? For example, is this basically like America’s Got Talent, about which no one I know cares, or is this actually a big deal with the common pleb?
Even for USians it’s pretty common to be flooded with Eurovision news on papers like TheGuardian. It feels like the only reason people care is because the media keeps covering it and thus people “have to see the thing everyone is talking about.”
Yes and No. There are certainly people in the common pleb that love Eurovision, I’m personally not that into it. It’s every single year. It gets old quick. IMO, if they made it a bi-yearly thing, people might be a bit more excited about it. But that’s another discussion.
Either you seem to be really loving eurovision, or you seem to have had enough of it for a lifetime. So I think it’s a very divided 50/50 split, probably varies from year to year depending on whatever song your country picked. I haven’t really watched it in 15 years or so, these days the songs are out on Youtube pretty quickly, so even if there’s an artist I like, I’d just listen to their song individually rather than sitting through an hour long broadcast.
Sometimes there are some solid songs I enjoy, Maybe wouldn’t put it on deliberately but if it came on the radio i might bob my head to it.
Personally, I think the greatest song ever produced for Eurovision was made as a half-time joke by a bunch of comedians, and thus, wasn’t an actual entry into the competition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ozCWyUlCg
Yeah, the amount of TV time spent on it is similar to the amount of TV time spent covering the European or World Football (soccer for Americans) Championships.
I suspect that without that overboard TV coverage almost literally shoving it down viewers throats, most people would forget about it.
Grotesco could easily win Eurovision if they ever cared to enter. So many of their songs live rent-free in Swedish people’s heads and this is hardly even top 10.
It’s a big deal! I’m also an American but I work as a travel advisor. When I ask European colleagues, it’s about 50/50 people who love it or hate it. But everyone knows about it! I get a lot of “oh my mom still watches that” so maybe not as popular with younger people, lol.
I’m not European, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of media coverage. You can’t spend 2 seconds on the mainstream music side of the internet without hearing something from the contest.