Eurovision Song Contest
The modern logo was introduced for the 2004
Contest to create a consistent visual identity.
The host country’s flag appears in the heart.
The Eurovision Song Contest
(French:
Concours Eurovision de la chanson)[1] is an
annual competition held among active mem-
ber countries of the European Broadcasting
Union (EBU).
Each member country submits a song to
be performed on live television and then
casts votes for the other countries’ songs to
determine the most popular song in the com-
petition. Each country participates via one of
their national EBU-member television sta-
tions, whose task it is to select a singer and a
song to represent their country in the inter-
national competition. The Contest has been
broadcast every year since its inauguration in
1956 and is one of the longest-running televi-
sion programmes in the world. It is also one
of the most-watched non-sporting events in
the world,[2] with audience figures having
been quoted in recent years as anything
between 100 million and 600 million interna-
tionally.[3][4] Eurovision has also been broad-
cast outside Europe to such places as Aus-
tralia, Canada, Egypt, Hong Kong, India,
Jordan, New Zealand, South Korea and the
USA, despite the fact that these countries
cannot compete.[5] Since the year 2000, the
Contest has also been broadcast over the In-
ternet,[6] with more than 74,000 people in al-
most 140 countries having watched the 2006
edition online.[7] The contest even has its
own Youtube chanel, with over 2.5 million
channel views and 12,000 subscribers.
Origins
Further information: History of the Eurovi-
sion Song Contest
Lys Assia, 1956
In the 1950s, as a war-torn Europe rebuilt it-
self,
the European Broadcasting Union
(EBU)—based in Switzerland—came up with
the idea of an international televised song
contest, to be transmitted simultaneously to
all countries of the union. This was conceived
during a meeting in Monaco in 1955 by Mar-
cel Bezençon, a Swiss working for the
EBU.[8] The competition was based upon the
existing Sa