Why do we celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest?

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Why do we celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest?

Beautiful songs, weird outfits, smokescreens and fireworks: the Eurovision Song Contest offers top musical entertainment every year. Still, the idea behind the music event is much more than singing along with your favorites for a few nights. Why has the Eurovision Song Contest started again?

The Second World War is only just behind us, when the European Broadcasting Union was founded in 1950. The EBU should promote cooperation between European countries in the field of culture and television.

Through the EBU, all kinds of television programs are broadcast throughout Europe, but there is also a search for a program that is made together and has no political charge.

The idea is that such a program reduces the chances of a new war.

In 1955, the form of this cultural cooperation will be investigated. A source of inspiration is the now world-famous San Remo Music Festival where artists from all over Italy have participated since 1951.

In Lugano, Switzerland, the time has come in 1956: the Netherlands opens what we now know as the Eurovision Song Contest. It is not as spectacular and grand as the Eurovision Song Contest is now, because at that time relatively few people have a television set.

Seven countries participate that year and everyone performs two songs. In the end, host country Switzerland wins with the song Refrain.

During the first Eurovision Song Contest, the audience can not yet vote. It is not even announced how many points the jury has given to all acts. A scoreboard is not introduced until a year later.

In the sixties, between sixteen and eighteen countries participate every year. The popularity of the competition increases in the following years and more and more countries from all over the world want to participate.

As a result, the European feeling disappears a bit. This flourishes again when, after the Cold War, more and more countries from Central and Eastern Europe join in.

Why do we celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest?

An ever longer show

As more and more countries participate, the television show lasts longer and longer. That is why in 1993 it was decided to introduce a new round, in which new countries must qualify for the final.

The Eurovision Song Contest as we know it now, with a first and a second semifinal, only exists since 2008. Meanwhile, about forty countries participate every year, but in the final there is only room for 26 countries (or 25 like this year).

Whether the event is really free of politics as was hoped in the fifties has been the subject of debate for years. Countries often vote for neighboring countries or countries with which they have important agreements.

The songs must in any case be free of political lyrics, which is why Belarus was excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest in 2021. Russia has been excluded from this year because of the war in Ukraine.

The Netherlands, among others, has called for this.

Why do we celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest?

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