The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) says the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t political, and argues that Russia’s ban in 2022 was “fundamentally different”.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) says the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t political, and argues that Russia’s ban in 2022 was “fundamentally different”.
Eurovision is put on by the European Broadcaster Union, an organization that extends well beyond Europe itself, including Algeria, Azerbaijan, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Georgia, Armenia, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey. The Arab states have generally not participated as a protest of Israel (and because it’s very gay), but they are full members and are completely eligible to participate if they ever wanted to.
Gotcha, I assumed it was for European countries only based on the name alone.
You’d never know it today, but “Eurovision” as a term was originally coined to refer to the new broadcasting network capable of pushing the same feed to multiple counties’ own networks simultaneously. That is to say, it’s fully called the Eurovision Song Contest, because it’s a song contest that’s broadcast on the Eurovision network. The network is actually still used for a lot of stuff today, particularly live sports.