Eurovision Song Contest

The Eurovision Song Contest is a annual song competition held among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956.

About[edit]

In this contest, there is no place for organised attempts to unfairly influence the outcome.
- Jon Ola Sand, Executive Supervisor of the Contest on behalf of the EBU ("Eurovision Song Contest organisers tighten measures to ensure voting integrity", ebu.ch, 6 February 2014. Retrieved 9 February 2014.)

Perhaps the most widely celebrated object of ridicule was the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual television competition first broadcast in 1970. A commercial exercise glossed as a celebration of the new technology of simultaneous television transmission to multiple countries, the show claimed hundreds of millions of spectators by the mid-70s. The Eurovision Song Contest, in which B-League crooners and unknowns from across the continent performed generic and forgettable material, before returning in almost every case to the obscurity whence they had briefly emerged, was so stunningly banal in conception and execution as to defy parody. It would have been out of date fifteen years earlier, but for just that reason, it heralded something new. The enthusiasm with which the Eurovision Song Contest promoted and celebrated a hopelessly dated format and a stream of inept performers reflected a growing culture of nostalgia, at once wistful and disabused. If punk, postmodern and parody were one response to the confusions of a disillusioned decade, retro was another.
- Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945

The presence of Ukraine at this international event is very important, especially in such a difficult time of war for us, it will enable us to convey Ukraine’s voice and message to the whole world.
- Oksana Skybinska, Head of Ukrainian Delegation while releasing 2024 national selection information.("Україна візьме участь у Євробаченні-2024: хто стане музичним продюсером?", eurovision.ua, 28 August 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.)